Denton 2010

Stephen Mueller made this dreamy abstract painting, Denton, with, what looks like, acrylic on canvas. The colour palette is like, straight out of a candy store but there's a certain restraint in how the gradients are handled, creating a real sense of depth. The material aspects are kinda interesting here. You see how the paint is applied in thin layers, almost like washes? It's not about heavy impasto or gestural brushstrokes. Instead, it's about building up these luminous fields of colour. There’s a cool contrast between the soft, diffused edges and the hard-edged shapes floating in the foreground. The way these shapes, especially the oval-like forms at the top, connect with these stripes of colour, feels very playful, almost childlike. Mueller's work always felt like a conversation with artists like, say, Joan Miró, who embraced a similar sense of whimsy and abstraction. But where Miró was all about biomorphic forms and surreal landscapes, Mueller leaned into pure colour and geometry. He knew art is an ongoing experiment, always open to new ideas.