Blues, Greens 1969

John Hoyland made Blues, Greens with paint, sometime around 1969. Look at that saturated royal blue, contained by the brown and a vivid green line. It’s like a portal, or a stage set. Hoyland was one of those painters, like Helen Frankenthaler, who was really committed to color. I can just see him in his studio, pushing colors around, seeing what happens when they meet. What does that green line do to the blue? How does it sit next to the brown? These are the questions that painters ask themselves. It’s a conversation, a back and forth between intention and accident. That brown area isn’t just a border; it feels like another color trying to assert itself, like it wants to be more than just a frame. Maybe Hoyland was thinking about Rothko, or maybe he was just trying to find his own way of making something that felt both simple and complex. These colors, these shapes, they’re not just sitting there, they’re alive and buzzing!