“The only rule is that there are no rules. Anything is possible . . . . It’s all about risk, deliberate risks.” – Helen Frankenthaler

Frankenthaler developed her “soak-stain” technique by pouring highly thinned paint onto an unprimed canvas laid flat on the floor, a method that allowed the paint to soak into the weave of the fabric, fusing paint and canvas into one. She referred to the areas where paint colors expanded into one another as “well-ordered collisions” which were only partly under her control. This reduced the presence of the artist’s gestures in the painting while emphasizing the nature of canvas (porous) and paint (staining). The result can evoke a giant watercolor, perhaps a result of Frankenthaler’s lifelong passion for swimming and observing the changing surfaces of the sea.