Work in progress: Emerald City

Another work in progress from a bunch of unfinished paintings I started last night.

Work in progress: Emerald City

Sundays with Clyfford Still: Beyond This Dark Place (3)

Welcome to Sundays with Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This episode is third in the series.  You can find the others here.

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Life imitates art.  It’s spring,  the branches outside are budding, and a painter once nearly forgotten is bringing new life to the art world.  And to me.

Today’s Clyfford Still painting is from the early phase of his career.  In the late 1930s, he was still painting recognizable figures, but his works were losing their forms and becoming more and more abstract.   The work below,  now at the SFMoMA, is his most abstracted work from 1936-1937.   He went on to create the first abstract expressionist painting in 1944.

Still went the opposite way of Rothko:   Rothko’s paintings faded over time from brilliant color into ever darker and more somber hues, like an ember burning out.