Untitled 1945 - 1946

This drawing by Mark Rothko uses chalk, pastel, and watercolor to create a world of floating forms and subdued tones. I imagine Rothko shifting and adjusting, intuitively moving lines and smudging colors. There’s this vertical cadence – the way that the forms stack and balance is just so particular. They remind me of dancers or maybe even strange architectural forms. What was Rothko thinking? Was he feeling some sort of cosmic pressure, trying to balance lightness and darkness? The black gestures are so bold. I see how he's pulling on this thread, this sense of melancholy, that runs through all his work. It makes me think about other painters like Gorky, always hovering between representation and pure abstraction. Artists, you know, we're always talking to each other across time. We take what others have done and we twist it, push it, make it our own. And isn't that just the beauty of painting? It’s about the ambiguity, the stuff we can't quite put into words.