on wheat, by agnes martin, 1957

sitting in front of “wheat”

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it’s mesmerizing. like a golden field stretched out for a thousand miles on a clear warm day—but not too hot. the kind of day when there’s a breeze that prickles your skin but you don’t go inside to get your jacket.

at first the grey border looks like one shade as you’re drawn into the fields of wheat, but after a moment you realise its two types of grey fringing the field like vaseline on a camera lens. it pushes you in.

wheat whispers to you so quietly that at first you’re not sure if its a voice or a gust through the tree branches. but it is a voice & you can barely make out what it’s saying. maybe the words don’t matter? maybe they don’t have any meaning anyway.

a woman comes into the gallery & stands in front of wheat. perfectly centered. the center column rises from her like steam.

she’s enveloped in yellows like a goddess or the painting of one, with a delicate shimmering halo.

is this what agnes wanted us to do? daydream into her paintings?

notes on joan mitchell

some notes taken at the joan mitchell exhibition at san francisco museum of modern art

“this is a tree. I mean, it’s my idea of a tree which has nothing to do with a real tree.”

— joan mitchell

evenings on 73rd street

the orange is funny. 73rd street always felt brown to me. or a kind of grey brown like the fur on a real world-hardened squirrel.

maybe the gestures are hints at the people crowding the streets? the colours of their clothing flashing between buildings.

the red fits, but the orange I can’t quite make sense of. especially the one jagged hook in the center…like the men catching fish off the pier where I was walking this morning.

mud time

the violet pushes out here, like a secret being revealed or the first hours of dawn when the sun hasn’t made it quite over the horizon.

mud time like the stuff that caked my shoes as I trudged around le mont saint michel, the tide sliding in, claywet.

the clay is there too—that slick french clay that holds you like glue. your shoes almost pull off as you yank your foot free. the sound it makes… something like a slit throat.

that’s what the greens here are. the earth trying to swallow you back up.

untitled, 1961

“she risked the painting collapsing into unsightly chaos”

vétheuil

two people, one devouring the other.

OR

leaning down to kiss.

incredible how often those things overlap… or are even the same.

salut tom (for tom hess)

the yellow is almost warm but in a reserved kind of way. like when spring has sprouted but winter chill hangs on.

memory

nostalgia

sadness

la vie en rose

when you try to be relaxed but there’s that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.

on night sea, by agnes martin, 1963

sitting in front of “night sea”

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it is completely different in person. it doesn’t even look like the pictures on the internet.

the gold leaf literally sparkles, but the line is so fine you have to lean in close to see it. it has to catch the light.

& it’s not blue! it’s more turquoise, but not a steady shade. each individual rectangle has a gradient from deep turquoise to deep ocean blue. the lines start to shift as you look at it. they start to trick you. & this is how you’re pulled in, like quicksand in slow motion.

& you can see her. where the lines don’t quite match up or reach the edges of the canvas. that’s where agnes lives.

it stands out for its depth. the way I feel sometimes when I cross a bridge & a voice says “jump”.

night sea undulates the way the ocean does when there’s not a shoreline in sight. it feels like floating on your back & you just dip your ears below the water. sound becomes just a suggestion. you’re in a different world now. do you have a body? does it matter? maybe you & your body are the same thing as the water. maybe there’s no grid where your body ends & the water begins.