Blue and Red 1951

This 'Blue and Red' by Ellsworth Kelly is deceptively simple; just two blocks of flat colour. It makes me think about what it was like for Kelly to choose these colours. Imagine the studio, paints lined up, the back and forth between shades until bam!—these two sing. The red sits there, solid, while the blue floats above, like an endless sky. I wonder if Kelly was thinking about landscape, or maybe just the pure sensation of colour hitting your eye. It reminds me of the paintings of Barnett Newman or Agnes Martin who found the sublime in the simple act of arranging one or two colours together on canvas. Kelly's decision to keep it so minimal is the point. It's an invitation for us to really see, and to feel. Painting can offer us new ways of experiencing the world, one colour at a time.