Evergreen Licks 1987

Sam Francis made this painting, Evergreen Licks, with oil on canvas. I can only imagine how much fun it must have been to splash all of this paint around. I love the open white space contrasting with the dense clusters of colour—red, green, purple, and gold. It's like Francis was playing with the tension between chaos and order, control and release. You can almost feel the movement of his hand as he flicked and splattered the paint across the surface. Look at the translucent, rainbow-coloured streak and the dripping rivulets of paint. When you look at this painting, you’re not just seeing colour, you’re witnessing a record of the artist's actions. It's like he was saying, "Here I am, in this moment, making my mark." This feels like a conversation with painters like Joan Mitchell who were also pushing the boundaries of abstraction. Ultimately, paintings like these show us that art is about so much more than just representation; it's about the messy, beautiful, and unpredictable act of creation itself.