Study II 1981

Brice Marden made this "Study II" with what looks like oil and wax on paper, and the surface just sucks you in. There’s this real physicality to the paint, not thick, exactly, but definitely present, alive. You get the sense of the hand, the arm, the body moving. It is like he’s trying to trap some feeling into these big blocks of colour. Take that dark green rectangle, it’s not just green, you know? It has these layers, maybe a little brown mixed in, so you can almost smell the olive groves, that sort of thing. It reminds me a little of Sean Scully, especially in the way he's using those rectangular blocks of color, but Marden has a certain quietness, a certain humility, that really speaks to me. For me, art is about embracing uncertainty and finding poetry in the everyday.