Red and Green with Pale Colors 1966

Robert Goodnough made this painting, *Red and Green with Pale Colors*, with a very light touch. It is barely there – a ghostly architecture of rectangles on a milky, mottled ground. I can imagine Goodnough building up this structure bit by bit, rectangle by rectangle, maybe tweaking the colors as he went. It feels like a conversation, a back and forth between intention and accident, where control is always threatening to give way to the unpredictable nature of paint. The thinness of the color is key. It feels like he's staining the canvas rather than covering it, letting the white ground peek through. These pale colors remind me of Agnes Martin's delicate grids, but with a more playful, improvisational spirit. It's as if Goodnough is sketching with color, finding a form that’s neither rigid nor chaotic, but somewhere delightfully in between. I love how these artists build upon each other, always pushing the boundaries of what painting can be!