Untitled (SFP94-105, SFF.1697) 1994

Sam Francis made this untitled painting with watercolor, probably not long before he died in '94. He's using these juicy colors – a bold red, a vibrant yellow, and this deep, watery blue. You can almost feel him pushing the paint around, letting it drip and pool, embracing all those happy accidents. I imagine him in his studio, totally absorbed, just letting the colors flow and interact. What's cool is how he leaves parts of the paper bare. Those white spaces aren't empty at all. They create this energy, like the painting is breathing. There's this one long stroke of yellow that zings across the blue, totally unexpected. It reminds me of Helen Frankenthaler's soak-stain paintings, how she'd pour thinned paint onto the canvas. With Francis you can see the conversation across time, how artists keep riffing off each other, pushing painting into new territories. It's like one big, messy, beautiful dialogue.