Untitled (L. I112) 1990

This is an untitled painting by Sam Francis. It's got these big, juicy shapes and drips of paint in every color you can imagine—reds, blues, greens, yellows. I can almost feel Francis dancing around the canvas, letting the paint fly where it may. I wonder what he was thinking, what he wanted to capture with these splashes and swirls. Maybe he was trying to bottle the feeling of a summer day, the way light dances on water, or the way colors explode in a garden. I mean, that black line curves so perfectly, like a calligraphic stroke, and then it dives into the mix. The way the paint pools and bleeds into the canvas creates depth and movement. Francis was part of a big conversation, you know? Like, he was looking at what people like Pollock and Rothko were doing, but then he took it somewhere totally new, all his own. And that’s what makes art so exciting, right? It’s like everyone’s riffing off each other, trying to find their own voice in the chorus.