Moonlight, Maine 1972

Betty Parsons made "Moonlight, Maine" with brushes and paint, of course, but what kind of paint? The painting looks like veils of deep blue pulled slowly across a golden ground, a push-pull of layered color. Can you see how the hand moved? A rhythmic dance of brushstrokes, building up this strange, almost cartographic form. It makes me want to sympathize with her, out there in Maine, wrestling with the canvas, trying to capture the feeling of moonlight on water. And what's that flash of orange in the middle? Is it a buoy, a signal, or maybe just a burst of pure, unadulterated feeling? In other works, Parsons used the grid a lot. But here, she is using her own kind of free-wheeling form. She's in conversation with lots of other painters. Painting is like that, an ongoing exchange of ideas across time. It's not about fixed meanings but embodied expression, embracing all the ambiguity and uncertainty of the world around us.