“A
great free joy surges through me when I work . . . With tense
slashes
and a few thrusts the beautiful white fields receive their color
and the work is finished in a few minutes. (Like Belmonte weaving
the
pattern of his being by twisting the powerful bulls around him,
I seem to achieve a comparable ecstasy in bringing forth the flaming
life through these large areas of canvas. And as the blues or
reds
or blacks leap and quiver in their tenuous ambience or rise in
austere thrusts to carry their power infinitely beyond the bounds
of the limiting
field, I move with them and find a resurrection from the moribund
oppressions that held me only hours ago.) Only they are complete
too
soon, and I must quickly move on to another to keep the spirit
alive and unburdened by the labor my Puritan reflexes tell me
must be the
cost of my joy.”
.
. . Clyfford Still, 1956
