Ajaccio I 1959

Richard Mortensen painted Ajaccio I with bold shapes, a flat yellow background, and lines dancing across the canvas. You can see him there, can’t you? Working out the composition, maybe from a sketch or memory, deciding where to put the pink shape, the brown area, and that flash of red. It's a playful conversation with form, like he’s trying to figure out the essence of something, maybe a feeling or an idea, by moving things around on the canvas. The paint looks smooth, no thick globs, which keeps the focus on the relationships between the colors and shapes, and the sharp edges make everything pop. Mortensen’s choice of non-representational form makes me think of the artists of the day, how they were challenging the status quo of the art world. I see the influence of geometric abstraction. Ultimately, making art is about having a dialogue with the past while creating something new, a journey of expression with every brushstroke.