Rankin 1979

John Hoyland made this print called Rankin in 1979 using screenprint. The overall colour palette is a kind of blue, from a light turquoise to a dark indigo, which gives the whole thing a cool, watery feel. The textures of the mark-making are really interesting – you can see the grain of the screen, and some areas look almost stained into the paper. The large square towards the bottom right is really bold, with dark drips trailing down, giving it a sense of immediacy. The way the colours bleed and overlap, especially in the upper right corner, creates depth. And then there's the little stack of black lines in the bottom left corner. It looks like a very rudimentary chair, but that is just a suggestion. Hoyland really gets you thinking about form, colour, and space. It reminds me a little of Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series, with that same feeling of layered abstraction and a kind of quiet contemplation.