Hydra 1981

Brice Marden made this painting, Hydra, with wax and pigment on paper. It looks like it might have been an intuitive, shifting, and emerging process of trial and error, you know? I can just imagine him, wrestling with these muted tones, layering them, scraping them back, deciding on these three vertical panels that create a kind of rhythm across the surface. The paint isn't super thick here, but you can still see the texture, the way the pigment sits on the paper. That central blue panel is so evocative, it's like a window, or a mood. I can almost feel Marden's hand moving, deciding, adjusting. The diagonal mark on the right panel looks accidental, but nothing really is, right? And, you know, that's the thing about painting. Artists are in an ongoing conversation, inspiring each other, building on ideas. Painting is expression, there's always more than one way of seeing it.