Phenomena Falcon's Bell

Paul Jenkins made this piece without ever touching a brush to the canvas. Instead, he thinned his paint until it ran freely, then poured it onto the surface and tilted the canvas so gravity did the rest. The colors pooled and streamed on their own, forming the deep browns and misty blue greens that drift across the top, while ribbons of red, yellow, and green pour down the right side like threads unraveling. All that pale open space around the color matters too, letting the painting breathe rather than crowding it.

An American painter working in the mid twentieth century, Jenkins is often grouped with the Abstract Expressionists, though his pouring method set him apart from the splatter and gesture of his peers. He named nearly every mature work "Phenomena," followed by a couple of words that came to him only after the paint had dried. The titles were his way of nodding to the natural forces guiding his process, and "Falcon's Bell" fits the mood of this one well. That burst of crimson spreading near the bottom feels less like something painted and more like a small storm caught in the act.