Colour field painting

Colour field painting is characterized by canvases featuring large areas of flat, single colour. From c.1950, abstract expressionist painters Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still became referred to by critics as ‘the colour field painters.’

Distinct from the gestural abstraction or ‘action painting’ made famous by Jackson Pollock, these artists sought to express mythic or transcendent ideas in a modern way. This search led them to abandon figuration or illustrative elements, instead painting enveloping fields of colour which may be smooth, rounded, or frayed at the edges of the canvas.

In his 1948 essay ‘The Sublime is Now’, Barnett Newman argued that it was time to abandon European art’s elevation of beauty. Instead referencing Edmund Burke’s 18th century aesthetics and proposing that the sublime was the only feasible response in the wake of war and under threat of the atomic bomb.

Seminal art critic Clement Greenberg was influential in championing the style. He celebrated the artists’ use of form and composition at a time when he felt art had become increasingly imitative and academic.

In his essay on the technique, he wrote: “The ultimate effect sought is one of an almost literal openness that embraces and absorbs color in the act of being created by it. [The colored field] has to be uniform in hue, with only the subtlest variations of value if any at all, and spread over an absolutely, not merely relatively, large area. Size guarantees the purity as well as the intensity needed to suggest indeterminate space: more blue simply being bluer than less blue.”

A range of application techniques were employed by different artists. Whilst Newman created horizontal or vertical stripes in pure colours, Still used a palette knife to apply thick layers of earthy colour in irregular compositions and combinations. Alternatively, Rothko applied expansive washes of colours to generally rectangular canvases, expressing deeply spiritual planes; eventually replacing the initial light shades with sombre blues and greys as his own mental health declined.

A purely abstract form of the style emerged in the 1960s, most notably in the work of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Sam Gilliam. Clement Greenberg named this new style ‘post-painterly abstraction.’

Artists working in this style differed from their predecessors by eliminating the emotional, mythic, or religious aspects of abstract expressionism as well as the highly personal, gestural application associated with it.

In a turning point for the movement, Helen Frankenthaler lay her unprimed canvas on the studio floor and soaked thinned paint into it. The result was more watercolour than oil painting and, as MoMA Curator Emeritus John Elderfield wrote, “It was as if the color and the surface were one thing…”

Inspired by her work, Morris Louis interpreted the technique by abandoning brushes in favour of pouring lines of paint directly onto canvases, producing rainbows of colour. The method of pouring was taken to the extreme by Williem de Kooning, whose thick paints rise up to create an ephemeral surface texture.

“It never gets old seeing Rothko's and Pollock’s and Helen Frankenthaler, but I also discovered new artists like Sam Gilliam, who blew my mind.” Says Stephanie. “His works are very gestural, painted canvases that he hung like drapery and, as a textile designer, I was standing in front of it quite overwhelmed.”

During the early 1960s Gilliam began to experiment with colour field techniques of pouring paints and staining canvases. By developing his own techniques of folding still-wet canvas against itself, he went beyond the restraints of the stretched canvas and became the first artist to exhibit an unsupported canvas in 1965.

Inspired by laundry hung on clotheslines near his Washington studio, vibrant paintings on expansive pieces of loose cloth were draped from the walls and ceiling or arranged on the floor. Entering the third dimension of painting and at an intersection with sculpture, Gilliam’s technique of installation was phenomenally successful – earning him many private and public commissions.

Colour Field is an expressive, energetic print which explores the abstract expressionist’s experimental layers of colour and captures some of the influential painting techniques that defined the movement. In our interpretation, gestural swaths of paint form multi-layered blocks of colour assembled into a monumentally scaled repeat.

“Mark Rothko championed this painting style with his fields of colour, seeking to create an artwork that made you feel something. We’re certainly not saying we’re Rothko, but we wanted to create a very gestural, colourful print that makes you feel good at your window.” Says Stephanie.

The design is digitally printed onto a yarn dyed linen base cloth which grounds the palettes and subdues the colour, presenting a nostalgic, lived-in appearance. “To create a vintage feel, we printed it onto a shot ground – it’s an oatmeal colour combination of cream and linen, which lets the print settle in with a softness to it.”

The eye travels across the drapery, catching areas of interest within each of our three palettes. Shellac, our ode to the colour confidence of the period, celebrates the radiance and joy that colour brings; Clay plays with the continued popularity of smoky, pigmented adobe tones of baked earth; and Mineral connects to the calming hues and earthen terracotta of our own landscapes, with touches of soft green and blue.