Aquatint and Etching on Whatman Paper Courtesy Jerald Melberg Gallery, Charlotte, NC, © Copyright (1990) Dedalus Foundation, Inc./Licensed by VAGA, NY

Robert Motherwell found no limitation in ideas or materials, or in extending ideas with materials or materials with ideas. The artist’s use of line and form creates a window through which we can see an atmosphere of time and place.

In speaking about the possibilities in his works, the artist once said:

I think a lot of my work has to do with correspondences that are not at all literal. I mean that my orange picture is not merely pure orange (though the purest orange I could get). It also has to with fruit, with the sun with skin, lot of things I’m not even aware of, maybe a hose I saw in Mexico once, forty years ago- who knows what? Ideally all the reverberations orange could have.

Dark and heavily textured shapes on thick deckled paper might allude to the monuments in iconic Stonehenge, while crimson red and the bold, yet elegant brushed gesture nods to the Matador’s cape across the approaching bull.

Motherwell’s studio was a converted carriage house that was spacious and bright. A row of skylights drew in the best quality light and sliding glass doors opened out to an expanse of grass and trees. The sonance of water from the nearby brook was within earshot of the active painting space. He often sat in the aged leather sofa in his painting studio, contemplating his work and reading any one of the hundred of books in his library. Writers- like Joyce, Baudelaire and Rimbaud- played into the narrative of his work again and again.

This journey through line and form in Robert Motherwell’s work provides us with a sense of getting lost and subsequently finding possibilities. An invitation has been extended into the soul space of the artist- a space where nature, memories and narrative all intersect.