Shadows I #3 1979

Andy Warhol made this Shadows painting as one of a series using silkscreen, paint and probably a squeegee. I love the way the colours bleed into one another, that soft edge between the crimson and blue reminds me of how colours feel, not just how they look. The surface isn’t perfectly smooth, it has bumps and pits, which make me think of all the accidental things that happen when I’m painting, those unexpected moments. And that dot, right in the middle of the curve, is that a mistake or on purpose? I like to think of it as a little punctuation mark in the middle of a sentence. Thinking of other artists, someone like Helen Frankenthaler comes to mind, especially in the way she used colour stains and let the paint soak into the canvas. But where Frankenthaler is all openness, Warhol keeps things tight, cropped and a little bit mysterious, its cool how artists can play with surface and let accidents happen while still getting the work done.