Seated Woman 1933

This is Mark Rothko's "Seated Woman," an oil on canvas. The brushwork here is direct, unblended, which gives the painting a sense of immediacy, like a sketch. Rothko is working through something, trying to find his way through the paint. I am interested in how the heaviness of the paint sits on the surface. Look how the blues and greens of her clothes and chair almost merge into one. The colors are rich, but the application feels searching. The brown lines that define the form feel provisional, like the woman could almost disappear back into the ground of the painting. There’s a real tension between the figure and the ground. The way the paint is handled reminds me of Milton Avery, who also used color to create a sense of mood and feeling. Both artists invite us to see the world in a new way, where the boundaries between things are blurred and the act of painting itself becomes the subject.