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Artworks
Betty Parsons
Untitled, c. late 1950sGouache on paper7 1/16 x 5 1/4 in (17.9 x 13.3 cm)
12 7/8 x 14 5/8 x 1 5/8 in framed (32.5 x 37.1 x 4.1 cm framed)BP107Throughout her life, Parsons traveled extensively, and she meticulously recorded her travels in her journals as watercolors and sketches and regularly drew on a sense of place in her work....Throughout her life, Parsons traveled extensively, and she meticulously recorded her travels in her journals as watercolors and sketches and regularly drew on a sense of place in her work. Though trained as a landscape painter began to paint abstractly in 1947. She described this shift as an effort to capture not what a place or event “looked like, but what it made [her] feel.” This small-scale work came directly from the artist’s notebook, taken out of the studio, and brought with her as she chronicled her journeys worldwide. In this untitled work, a vivid orange plane of color permeates a sea of loose, organic forms in contrasting cooler, dark tones. Fine lines inscribed into the top layers of paint were made with the back of the brush and evidence her method of working in multiple layers of thin color. In describing works of this nature, critic Roberta Smith noted, “gouaches here resemble sinuous road maps, while others isolate shapes of color on contrasting grounds, like islands in a sea, or windows in the corner of a room. Inevitably several shapes are finished off with enlivening scribbles that scratch through to reveal contrasting shades beneath.”
