Yellow Red 1994

Sean Scully made "Yellow Red" with blocks and stripes of color, like a quilt someone has started but not finished. You can almost feel the artist’s hand methodically laying down each stripe and square. I feel a kinship with Scully - I can imagine him, brush in hand, trying to find the perfect balance between the raw and the refined. What was he thinking as he chose each color, each line? Did he agonize over the texture, the weight of the paint? The yellow stripes make me think of sunlight, or maybe a field of wheat. And the red and black squares, they’re like a heartbeat, steady and strong. Scully is in conversation with so many painters who have explored abstraction and the emotional power of color. He's adding his voice to a chorus of artists stretching back through time. His painting is a reminder that there is an embodied quality to artmaking and that painting is an invitation to think about how we experience the world.