Falling Blue 1963

Agnes Martin, made this painting, Falling Blue, with acrylic and pencil, in no particular year. It’s a field of pale blue and tan, made up of horizontal lines. I always think of Agnes Martin as a kind of supreme minimalist, but when you get up close to one of her paintings you see it’s all in the touch. Look at the way the surface is built up in thin layers. The colours mix optically, as if the canvas is breathing. See how each line wavers and shifts, like a horizon viewed through heat haze? There is so much space in these paintings – the kind of space that makes you feel weightless. Her work reminds me a lot of the paintings of Hilma af Klint, another artist with a kind of deep connection to the cosmos. These works are never really about answers, but rather opening a space of possibility.