Untitled

Ribbons of red, yellow, and purple streak across this canvas as if frozen halfway through a wild dance. Paul Jenkins, an American painter who worked from the 1950s onward, made pieces exactly like this by letting thinned paint run loose across his surface. He would tilt the canvas and nudge the colors along with simple tools, at times using an ivory knife to steer where they pooled and bled together. The colors seem to still be in motion, even though the paint dried decades ago.

Jenkins often gets lumped in with the Abstract Expressionists, but his work fits better under the label of lyrical abstraction. He cared about flow, light, and how pigments behave when given space to spread rather than any sense of pure chaos. Darker streaks slice through the brighter tones, giving the piece a bit of depth and a quiet push and pull. Jenkins never wanted a fixed meaning attached to his work. His hope was simpler than that, that people would just enjoy the color and let their eyes follow the paint wherever it wanders.