Landscape (Mid-day) 1953

Morris Louis made this painting, Landscape (Mid-day), with a sense of freedom in its application, as if making art was a kind of game or conversation with the materials themselves. The color is washy and thin in places, but thick and opaque in others, like the velvety black mass in the center. The painting's surface is uneven, with drips, smears, and blotches of color overlapping, it feels kind of haphazard, and like the kind of painting you make when you’re not trying too hard, which is sometimes the best way to make a painting. Take for instance the bright blue marks to the left, the way they bleed into each other, but also create a kind of rhythm as they push upward. It reminds me a little bit of Helen Frankenthaler, who also made paintings with thin, washy colors, but there is also something very personal about Louis’s work, as though he had a very specific kind of touch. Ultimately, this is a painting that embraces process and ambiguity, inviting us to see the world in a new and unexpected way.