Untitled 1945

This untitled piece by Mark Rothko is a world of ochres, reds, blues, and blacks on a canvas surface. I see marks that suggest a kind of making and un-making, shifting forms emerging through trial, error, and intuition. What was Rothko thinking when he made this? Maybe about the thinness of paint and the ways the canvas sucks it up, demanding more and more of it. He's building something up, gesture by gesture. There is something almost architectural about the marks. The artist’s hand is so present—an ongoing conversation and exchange of ideas that artists have across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. It's like he's building a structure, adding layers of meaning with each brushstroke, like he's searching for some place, but, you know, maybe he doesn't know exactly what it is. This piece exists in that embodied expression which embraces ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.