Shadows I #6 1979

Andy Warhol made this painting, Shadows I #6, and just look at the way the paint has been dragged across the surface, the crimson morphing into something murky and gray. You can almost feel him at work, pushing the paint around, maybe frustrated, maybe euphoric, but definitely in the zone. There’s a real physicality to it, you know? I can imagine Warhol smearing the paint, getting his hands dirty, stepping back, then diving back in, it reminds me of the early days of abstraction, when painters like Helen Frankenthaler were staining canvases on the floor. I love how the red bleeds into the gray, creating this fuzzy, ambiguous boundary. It’s like a feeling that's hard to put into words, where the boundaries of things aren’t so clear. Like the edge of a shadow… It’s all part of the same conversation, painters riffing off each other across time, each one leaving their mark, trying to capture something fleeting and ineffable.