Day 06 : This Rain
Agnes Martin, This Rain, 1960
Friday night, the sky opened suddenly, and the rain came pouring down. Lightning flashed and lit up the darkness, and then it all stopped just as suddenly as it began. Autumn in Oregon.
Today, I came across this image of Agnes Martin’s painting entitled “This Rain”. The gray rectangle reminded me of the dark sky from Friday’s downpour.
I Googled the painting and found the audio guide recordings from a 2016 Agnes Martin exhibit at the Guggenheim museum, which featured “This Rain”. As I listened, I was struck by the way both the curators and Agnes herself spoke about her artwork and process. The way she describes the act of painting, and I presume art making in general, as beginning not with the painting, but before that, in the act of getting clear on what is in your mind and what it is you’re feeling. She says that it’s the feeling and the thinking within you that get transferred into the work of art, and so it is important to be conscious of what it is you are meditating through repeated thought and feeling.
Below are a few quotes from the recordings that I’ll be tumbling around in my mind in the coming days.
Agnes Martin always felt that her work contained some kind of emotive content, and that it wasn’t devoid of that just because the surfaces appear to be minimal and quiet.
—
Tracey Bashkoff
Curator
You can’t be in an unconscious state and paint. Because whatever is in your mind, and not the subject matter, but the feelings that you have related to that subject matter, is what you’re going to paint. So, the beginning is not actually painting, you know.
—
Agnes Martin
To be an artist, you look, you perceive, you recognize what is going through your mind. And it is not ideas. Everything you feel and everything you see and everything that your whole life goes through your mind, you know. But you have to recognize it and go with it and really feel it.
—
Agnes Martin
