Sixteen songs

Splashes of yellow, blue, and inky black dance across a warm sandy background in this lively canvas by Stanley Whitney. The title, "Sixteen Songs," offers a clue to reading it. Every cluster of color acts like its own melody, and when your eye moves from one to the next, the whole thing starts to feel like a jazz session captured in paint. Whitney made this work in 2010, staying true to abstraction, where mood and rhythm carry more weight than any object you might recognize.

Whitney is an American painter who has spent decades exploring what color can do. Many of his best known pieces line up blocks of color into neat grids, but this one breaks loose, with strokes that drip and scatter with real freedom. Traces of his hand are everywhere, one mark building on the last in a way that feels spontaneous and alive. The effect is bouncy, a bit messy, and full of energy.

Something refreshing comes through in a painting that makes no attempt to tell a story or picture a place. Its pleasure lies in watching bright colors knock into each other, and in noticing how the bare patches of beige hold just as much interest as the boldest splash of blue.