FAVOURITE OF THE MONTH MAY 2026

UNTITLED_2019_160x120x2,8 cm

No. 1030_Untitled, from 2019, forms part of my series of color-field paintings.

This extraordinary painting exudes a warm, shimmering, subdued light that captivates the viewer’s eye and floods the room with its atmospheric aura.

In the dominant colour field of the upper part of the picture, misty wisps seem to drift slowly within a hazy cloud formation. An opalescent shade of reddish-purple, containing nuances of plum, mulberry and cyan blue, has been achieved through countless thin layers. The velvety-soft surface has a glazed, almost watercolour-like consistency. Frayed, overlapping edges stage themselves subtly yet impetuously in a silhouette of light mulberry fragments against a frame of deep yellow-brown-orange, lending the cloud formation a physical presence.

The lower colour field, in warm, glazed dark brown, echoes the ethereal quality of the upper colour field. At the fading edges, splashes of cyan blue and mulberry, thrown gesturally and wildly here and there, flash into view, revealing deeper layers of colour.

The central bar, rendered in a rich, vibrant orange, has a dense, material quality. Its fiery presence captivates the viewer and draws the eye into the depths of an ocean of glowing light and fiery energy. The gaze gradually expands from the eruptive ″olar storm″ across the entire picture plane, and the connection with the two blocks of ″heaven and earth″ reveals a complete work that is in harmonious balance.

In No. 1030, what Dana Cranmer described regarding Rothko’s unique technique — ″layers of paint, brushed one over the other, possessing an opalescent quality, so that the light seems to radiate from within the paint layer itself″ — has been convincingly achieved. (Mark Rothko, exhibition catalogue, Tate, 1987, p. 189).

Dana Cranmer worked as an art restorer in New York City from 1970 to 2021 and spent seven years working for the Mark Rothko Foundation.

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