Night Sea
Agnes Martin
AGNES MARTIN, 1963. CRAYON, GOLD LEAF AND OIL ON LINEN.
Agnes Martin was defined by the labour of her process. Her early large-scale canvases were mathematical and systematic in their approach, enormous grids sketched by hand, taking months to turn into works of balanced beauty. Yet even in their completed state, the evidence of her work was clear. Night Sea, then, marked a turning point, where the underly power of her works came not from the proof of process but by a marked lightness that absorbs and overwhelms. A dialogue between control and nature, the shimmering blue and luminous gold make the visible grid system almost redundant. Martin creates lightness, an abstraction of the power of nature and renders herself and her labour redundant in the process. Night Sea marks the triumph of her grid paintings, never repeated, where the abstraction and the labour join in perfect harmony.