Four Seasons

Rivers of red, yellow, blue, and green stream across this canvas as if the paint is still on the move. The piece is called Four Seasons, painted in 1972 by American artist Paul Jenkins. He worked in a way most painters never try. Instead of reaching for a brush, he poured thin washes of color onto the canvas, then tilted and angled the surface so gravity did the work. The colors pooled, ran together, and bled at the edges, leaving trails that look wet even now, decades after they dried.

Jenkins came up alongside the Abstract Expressionist painters who changed American art in the middle of the twentieth century, but his glowing, see-through layers set him apart from the crowd. The title gives a gentle clue about what he was after. Warm reds and golds call up summer and fall, while the cooler blues and greens drift toward winter and spring. He was not trying to paint a real forest or field. His idea was to let color and motion stand in for the whole turning year, so the feeling of the seasons comes through without a single tree in sight.