Untitled 1974

Clyfford Still made this painting with oil on canvas, and if you look closely, you can see how the shapes seem to claw their way out of a dark background. I imagine Still working and reworking, scraping back layers, then adding more with a palette knife. The painting has a strange energy. What was Still thinking as he applied these colors? The dark hues are punctuated by bright reds and blues and white, like flares in the night sky. I almost feel Still's presence. He’s right here, present in the pushing and pulling, the dark matter from which these shapes have formed. I see a dialogue with other abstract painters like Rothko, but there's also something unique about Still's commitment to the jagged edge. It's this quality that makes his paintings feel so raw and immediate. As artists, we're all just making marks and hoping that something unexpected will appear.