Untitled (Help Wanted Full Page) 1994

Stephen Dean painted ‘Untitled (Help Wanted Full Page)’ with watercolor and gouache on newsprint. Look at this grid of blue—blocks of the same colour, yet each one different. I imagine Dean marking out each ad, one by one. There’s a real sense of deliberation, a slow, repetitive process of covering each block of text in shades of blue. Some are solid, others are watery, translucent. There’s something kind of meditative about it. I wonder if Dean was thinking about how we seek work, or how we all need to work to live? I think of other painters, like Agnes Martin, who worked with grids, and how a simple gesture, repeated, can become something complex, beautiful and meaningful. It’s like a conversation across time, artists building on each other’s ideas. Painting is like that, a constant exchange, where we try to make sense of the world. We might not always succeed, but that’s ok. Painting is about exploring, questioning, and seeing where it takes you.