Blue Green Ground 1961

John Ferren made this painting, Blue Green Ground, with all these looping gestures, kind of like he was ice-skating on the canvas. The painting’s got this incredible blue that sits underneath a kind of maroon square. And then on top of that, we get these strokes—these dashes of pink, white, green. You can see the artist feeling their way around the canvas, trying out different moves. It looks like a search, a real investigation, like a painter trying to figure out what it means to be a painter, you know? It reminds me of some of my own struggles in the studio, pushing paint around, smearing, scraping, layering, always searching for something, and often finding it in the process itself. These marks, they're not just decorative. They're like thoughts, feelings, trying to find their form. And then they're there, out in the world for us to look at and respond to. That’s the cool thing about painting, it never really stops evolving, it just keeps the conversation going.