Breaking Sea 1952

Milton Avery made this painting, Breaking Sea, with oil on canvas. It's like he was thinking about how to boil down a whole landscape, all the drama of the ocean, into a few simple shapes and colors. I can imagine him, squinting at the scene, trying to capture the essence of the sea. Look at the way the brown and tan hues meet the white of the cresting wave, it feels kind of like Rothko’s blocks of color, but here they’re used to depict the natural world. The paint isn't too thick, but you can definitely see the texture of the canvas. Those little drips of white paint running down from the wave look so good. It's almost like Avery is saying, "Yeah, painting is messy, life is messy, but that's where the beauty is." He wasn't trying to copy nature exactly. Instead, he was trying to capture the feeling of being there, of seeing the breaking sea. And that makes all the difference.