Lime-Lemon 1970

Gene Davis made this color field painting on canvas, and called it *Lime-Lemon*. The stripes, in variations of yellows and greens, are a simple formula, but the magic is in the subtle shifts. It’s like music, where the rhythm is constant but the notes change, creating a melody. I can almost feel the paint, thinly applied, letting the weave of the canvas breathe through. Look closely, and you might see the ghost of earlier stripes, a palimpsest of decisions made and then painted over. The surface is smooth, almost slick, like a well-worn table top that's been polished over time. There's one cadmium yellow stripe in particular, slightly wider than the others, that acts like a visual anchor, holding the whole composition together. Davis reminds me a little of Agnes Martin, not in terms of style, but in their shared interest in the grid as a structure to be both embraced and broken. Art's not about answers, it's about the questions we ask, and the spaces in between.