Tondo VII 1984

Keith Achepohl made this watercolor, Tondo VII, on paper, and it's like looking through a porthole into another dimension. I love the dreamy quality of the colors. Achepohl is playing with forms and space, creating a window into an architectural landscape. The interplay of light and shadow, the way the greens, blues, and grays shift and blend, it's like he's building a world right before our eyes. I can imagine him carefully layering the washes, letting the water do its thing, guiding the pigments across the surface, and making decisions as he went along, adding depth and complexity. There's a quietness to it, a sense of contemplation. He's in conversation with the abstract tradition, but on his own terms, isn’t he? Like Agnes Martin's quiet grids, or maybe Diebenkorn's landscapes. It’s proof that painting is always evolving, always finding new ways to see and feel the world.