Sam Francis

"Painting is about the beauty of space and the power of containment" - Sam Francis

Sam Francis seemed to view his art and his own existence as part of an ongoing flow, where we are all at the center of time and space. Creation is a part of a constantly evolving growth process, a fusion of past experiences that continuously blend with new ones and transform, where colors and forms grow in and out of each other in an unbroken sequence, like a unified and smooth wave. For Sam Francis, color was more than just a medium; it had its own expressive life, it was a carrier of emotions, almost sacred.

Claudia Friedrich writes "Red, blue, yellow, green, violet - radiantly colored pigments are spontaneously and dynamically applied to paper and canvas. Thin rivulets flow across the ground, forming organic-looking constellations of form, encountering floating areas of color that emerge like luminous islands in a lake of white ground. Seemingly random and intuitive, patterns are woven, synapses established. Sam Francis’ works convey much more to us than they seem to at first glance: the finite delineation of the material through cropping and the dissolution of the separation between inside and outside provide insight into the artistic creative process."