Gethsemane 1944

Mark Rothko made this artwork, Gethsemane, using oil paint on canvas. Look at this strange image. The way the paint has been applied, in thin layers, almost like a stain, gives the painting a ghostly, ethereal quality. I imagine Rothko, wrestling with form and content, trying to find a visual language for the unsayable. The title evokes a sense of spiritual struggle, so I wonder what he was thinking, what feelings he was trying to express. How was he shifting and layering the paint? Was he stepping back to consider the composition, or did he work intuitively, letting the image emerge from the act of painting itself? There’s something really unsettling about the red dot in the middle of it. Is it watching me? I feel echoes of other painters in this work. It speaks to a shared understanding of painting as a process of inquiry, a way of thinking through feeling. It reminds me that art-making is one big conversation.