River, Rocks and Smoke 4/10/90 No. 17 1990

John Cage made this watercolour, River, Rocks and Smoke 4/10/90 No. 17, on paper in 1990. Look at those delicate washes of colour. Can you see how they bleed and flow into one another? I bet he worked on the floor, letting the watercolours pool and find their own way. It’s almost like he’s collaborating with the materials themselves, allowing chance and accident to guide the image. I wonder if he was listening to music while making this; maybe that’s where some of the flow came from! Those light tones remind me of the way Helen Frankenthaler would stain the canvas, pushing the paint into the fabric. Cage’s work feels related somehow, like part of the same conversation about openness, process, and letting go of control. It’s as though the image is constantly shifting, never quite settling into a fixed form. And that little dash of colour at the bottom? It really punctuates the whole composition. It's as though he added it at the end and stepped back with a smile! I'm always thinking about how artists inspire each other across time, building on each other's ideas. Painting is like that, too – an ongoing exchange that embraces uncertainty and ambiguity.