All There Is 1986

Sean Scully made this painting, *All There Is*, with oil on aluminum. The way he builds up these horizontal stripes feels like a process of layering thoughts, one on top of the other. The surface is so interesting; you can really see the hand of the artist. The paint isn’t trying to hide anything. It's not about illusionism, but about the physicality of the paint itself. Where the blue and black meet on the left, there's a kind of quiet tension, a visual stop that makes you reconsider the rhythm of the rest of the painting. It’s like a hinge, turning the meaning in another direction. Scully’s work always reminds me of Agnes Martin, but with a bit more grit, a bit more earth. These aren't perfect stripes, and that's where the beauty lies, in that imperfection, that openness to interpretation.