Sea Painting I 1974

This is one of Brice Marden’s Sea Paintings and, well, he must have made it with paint of course! Look how the tonal values are layered and mixed. It’s a very subtle painting, almost monochrome, but on closer inspection, it’s full of variation. When I look at this, I think about the labor involved in creating such a painting. It’s not a quick splash; instead, it’s a slow, methodical layering. I imagine Marden carefully mixing his colors, achieving just the right shade, then applying them to the canvas. He probably worked on this for days, maybe weeks, letting each layer dry, then adding another. You can almost feel the weight of the sea, the cool dampness of the air, and the endless horizon. It connects to Rothko and Reinhardt and others, but remains definitively Marden: an ongoing conversation across time, inspiring one another’s creativity and embracing ambiguity.