Driving East, 2002 — Fine Art

Driving East, 2002- shows soft color washes spread across the paper, with thin lines and open space between them. The marks look poured and blotted rather than drawn with a brush. Helen Frankenthaler worked with this soak stain method, letting thin paint sit into the surface and leave an uneven edge.

This is a fine art print set in a frame with a back panel, so the color fields stay flat and the thin lines stay sharp. You see the paper grain under the ink instead of a gloss over it.

On a bedroom wall near a reading chair, the pale bands sit above the mattress and the open gaps between them let the wall show through. From the foot of the bed you take in the broad color first, then the small line details when you pass by.