House by the Ocean 1978

Ronnie Landfield made this watercolour, House by the Ocean, with the kind of hands-off approach that lets the medium do its thing, like setting the stage for a beautiful accident. The colours bloom and bleed into each other, a dance of pigment and water, really emphasizing artmaking as a process. Up close, the texture is all about the flow. Watercolors do that, you know? It’s thin, transparent, a kind of controlled spill. Look at the jagged line where the yellow meets the violet, like a coastline under a stormy sky. It's chaotic, but there’s also a weird kind of order, a balance between the colours and the space. You can imagine the artist tilting the paper, guiding the flow, but also letting go, trusting the water to find its own path. This piece is a departure from some of Landfield's later, more geometric works, but you can see the seeds of his interest in colour and composition. Think of Helen Frankenthaler too, who knew all about the beauty of letting paint soak into canvas. Like them, Landfield reminds us that art is always an experiment, a conversation, a process of discovery.