Green 1951

Ellsworth Kelly made this monochromatic painting, called Green, with paint on paper. The funny thing about a seemingly simple, single-color painting like this is that it really makes you look. How flat is it, really? I love the way the color sits right on the surface, becoming an object, like a green screen before the CGI. Up close, the paint isn’t perfectly smooth; you can see the slight variations in tone and the texture of the paper coming through. In the bottom left corner there’s a little fleck or imperfection. I enjoy these little details. They remind you that it's handmade, not machine-made. It almost makes me think of some of Agnes Martin’s grid paintings, except instead of lines, Kelly gives us one solid block. Both artists invite us to slow down, see, and feel. They remind us that there’s always more than meets the eye.