Picture With A White Border 1913

Wassily Kandinsky made "Picture With A White Border" with oil on canvas. Imagine him at work, shifting and improvising, pushing the paint around the canvas, maybe stepping back and squinting at it, trying to find some kind of harmony. I can sympathize with the process. It’s all about feeling your way through it. The color here is so buoyant. Pools of blues and greens bleed and merge with reds and browns. Then, check out those black lines that almost seem to float above the surface, tethering the forms, like a kind of visual scaffolding. The paint isn’t too thick, but you can see how he’s layered it, building up the surface with delicate marks. It reminds me of other painters like Joan Mitchell, who were also trying to capture something ineffable through color and gesture. Artists are always in conversation with each other, riffing on ideas and pushing the boundaries of what painting can be. There is a certain ambiguity here that leaves room for multiple interpretations.