Letter Poem 1971

John Dowell made this 'Letter Poem' on a sheet using delicate marks and subtle colors. You can almost feel the paper's surface, can’t you? It's like the page itself is breathing. Look at the way he’s built up these layers of tiny marks, these soft lines and dots, it’s like a visual whisper. The color is applied so thinly, it's almost like you're seeing the ghost of a color, a memory of a hue. There's a kind of gentle accumulation, a building up of marks that reminds me of Agnes Martin’s grids, but also of Cy Twombly’s frenetic scribbles, though here it's all hushed, intimate. It makes you wonder, what kind of conversation is Dowell having with these marks? Each gesture feels like a tiny meditation, a way of seeing and feeling the world. And isn't that what art is all about? A constant dialogue, a quiet revolution of seeing?