Everything you need to know is right there in the artwork.

Two abutted sheets of paper.
Two hand-drawn pencil line ellipses.
Two adjacent colors.
Dark and light values paired.
Acrylic paint.
A mix of dark purple/red/black.
A wonderful green/yellow. Somehow, I feel like I know this color–yellow mixed with a few drops of black.

It is my sense that Mangold’s color is developed incrementally, the result of subtle adjustments. The application of each thin layer of paint slightly differs from the previous layer.

The color fields touch where the two sheets of heavyweight paper meet. The overall composition appears symmetrical. Top and bottom edges of the color fields are parallel. Sides are not. From a distance the color fields look hard-edged. Close inspection reveals paint bleed.

The straight edges of the two color fields contrast with the soft curves of the two ellipses. One is in/on the light-colored area. The second materializes in the dark field of color. The artwork was made by alternating line and color. The result fixes a line that is neither on nor under the color, but rather one with it.

The layering of line and color traps time.

Mangold’s art is in the give and take, his intuitive sequencing of what will next happen. It is definitely not mechanical. There is much to see and consider. So many decisions are required to make this one artwork. Awareness of them commands my attention.

The drawing rewards and confounds expectations.

Intention is built on experience and intuition.

These are qualities I strive to embrace in my own art making.

Here is the artist’s explanation of the process: “I use a variety of plastic elements, such as the top of a bottle, an empty spool of tape or whatever else is accessible to me in the studio–bits and pieces that pile up. I then make a puddle of paint on the palette, dip the object in it, and roll it on the cardboard. It sometimes skids, or jumps a little.”¹

The first step in the making of this drawing was the selection of a surface and the object or objects to mark it. It is clear that both selections demand discrimination and judgment plus a loose conformity to the anticipated outcome as the artist then sees it. Once chosen, the object was not ordered so rigorously that its qualities would be
obscured by the will of the artist. On the other hand, the artist did not remain mute, thereby preventing the object from articulating the intention of the work on its own.

Williams clearly expresses this collaboration between artist and materials as he describes the simple act of selecting the object, picking it up, and holding it while rolling it on the board. He tells us that when the object hits the surface it “sometimes skids or jumps a little.” He feels this alteration in his hand and allows the skid to happen. Or not. It is he who sets the desired direction. The clarity of his assessment and his discrimination determine the position of the mark, the force of the footprint and, most importantly, the rhythm that will, in the end, carry the viewer’s eye from one element to the next, from beginning to end, comfortably.

What is most pleasing about this drawing is the simplicity of the composition. Williams “writes” with these objects, and each sentence has all the gradations typical of prose: the ordered, recurrent alteration of tall and short, small and large, slender and squatty. The arrangement mimics the modulations and rhythm typical of speech and writing. This harmonious grouping, essential in a true work of art, carries the eye from object to object in what feels like, and in fact is, a sure ride towards understanding.

1. Telephone conversation with Mark Williams on August 10, 2010.