Untitled (Brown, Red, Green, White) 1950

Perle Fine made this untitled painting with, it looks like, oil on canvas and, like me, she wasn't afraid of a bit of brown. The thing I notice is the way Fine has built up the surface. You can almost feel the give and take, the back and forth of applying paint, scraping it off, and then applying it again. There's a real physicality here, and it makes me think about the way she worked, probably standing up, moving around the canvas, responding to what was already there. Look at the looping lines on the painting’s surface, pale against the more muted blocks of colour behind, a real sense of energy and movement in those gestures. This reminds me of the work of another abstract expressionist, Joan Mitchell. Both artists share a love of colour and a willingness to let the painting process be visible in the final work. For both, it’s not about creating an illusion, but about revealing the messy, beautiful truth of artmaking.