Manitou 1971

Stephen Mueller made "Manitou" using paint, but honestly, it looks like he wrangled light itself. The colours here are like faded sunsets, full of gentle gradations and soft edges. He wasn't trying to hide the process, you can feel the layers building up, like memories blurring into one another. Look how the paint thins and thickens, almost breathing on the surface. Near the bottom, see that cloudy triangular form? The way it glows from within, it's like a portal, or maybe just a trick of the light. Mueller was really good at these tricks. It's not about precision, but about creating a mood, a space for your mind to wander. This kind of open-ended, anything-goes abstraction reminds me a bit of a slightly earlier painter, Forrest Bess, who also saw painting as a way of mapping inner landscapes. Mueller isn't so hung up on symbols, but he shares that sense of art as a journey, a conversation that never really ends.