Funds of St. Clair 1921

Theo van Rysselberghe made Funds of St. Clair, a painting that really makes you think about art-making as a process, a kind of doing as thinking. You can see how the colors are dabbed on, one next to the other – blues and greens, oranges, yellows and browns. The paint isn't blended. It’s more like the painting is built out of these little touches. It’s like he’s trying to show you how light itself is made out of colors, you know? There is this place, near the center, just above the yellow field. It's so thick with paint, like a little mountain range of strokes. This work reminds me of Signac, maybe. But I think Rysselberghe is doing his own thing here. In art, nothing is ever totally fixed. Every artist is taking something from someone else and making it new. It’s about embracing the possibilities. The ambiguity. The not-knowing.