Grey oval 1917

Here's my take on Kandinsky's 'Grey Oval'. This piece, by Wassily Kandinsky, features a kind of battleground of forms and colours that must have emerged bit by bit, slowly solidifying through trial and error. I feel a sense of play in the making, a lightness of touch and an awareness of surface. I imagine him, stepping back, squinting, and then leaning in again to adjust a line here, a color there. The greys and blacks set the tone, but then, wow, these bursts of red, blue, and yellow. He’s really orchestrating a symphony of chaos, a visual world without gravity. There's this incredible tension between the deliberate and the accidental, the controlled and the free. The oval shape itself is like a container for all these wild gestures, a stage where different shapes can act out their dramas. Thinking about the history of art, I see Kandinsky in conversation with the past, and paving the way for so much to come. All of us painters working today owe him a debt, because he showed us that painting can be about feeling and possibility and be open to endless readings.