Quiet Landscape 1972

Mary Beth Edelson made "Quiet Landscape" on paper with paint, and right away, I'm drawn to how the process feels so present. There's a real physicality to the paint, especially in that big, white form—is it a cloud, a rock, something else? You can see how she's built it up with these broad, confident strokes, leaving visible traces of the brush’s movement. The way the paint is applied gives it a kind of weight and texture, like you could almost reach out and feel the ridges. And look at the sky: it's not just a flat wash of color, but a layered mix of dark tones that create this moody, atmospheric depth. The landscape feels like it’s breathing. It reminds me of Guston, in the way that Edelson embraces the materiality of paint and lets it speak its own language. It’s this kind of open-ended, exploratory approach that makes art so exciting—the feeling that anything is possible, and that the process itself is as important as the final image.