Square with #4

Wild and wonderful squiggles and washes of acrylic cascade down the surface of Yuan Chen’s Square with #4. These painterly, Joan Mitchell-like expressions are complicated and complimented by loosely geometric black lines that offer an alternative to the waterfall of kaleidoscopic color and the fanciful swirling spindly black lines that make up the rest of the canvas. They serve almost as a highlighter for the warm colors they overlay (so, kind of the opposite of a highlighter, I guess). The marked absence of geometric forms and the rich tonal patchwork would be beautiful in their own right, but the hints of hard-edged lines bring out the joy inherent in the composition.