Etamin 1965

Paul Feeley made 'Etamin' with paint, but it feels like something else, maybe fabric dye or ink. What I love about it is that it’s so simple, so direct, and yet it opens up all these different spaces in your head. The paint looks stained into the canvas, not sitting on top. The green is opaque, anchoring the design, while the red is luminous. This gives the whole piece a very definite sense of figure-ground relationships, of forms interlocking and dancing around each other. Look at how the arms of the crosses almost kiss the edges of the red squares, forming a star, a flower, or even a little molecular diagram. For me, 'Etamin' connects to a whole tradition of color field painting, particularly someone like Kenneth Noland, who was also interested in simple geometric forms and how they interact on a flat surface. This painting reminds me that art is a conversation between artists and across time, and that the best art leaves room for us to bring our own experiences and interpretations to the table.