Flood

Helen Frankenthaler

In Provincetown, America’s oldest continuous art colony, Helen Frankenthaler began to change. Pivoting from the broadness of her abstract, expressionist beginnings, she started to create softer, stranger works. The extraordinary community and the local landscape provided the time, space and emotion necessary to move her experimental painting practice in new directions. That new direction lay in her ‘soak-stain’ technique - a practice of diluting acrylic paint with turpentine until it had the consistency of watercolour. Flood is archetypal of Frankenthaler's Provincetown period. It is a 'Colour Field' painting - something the artist effectively invented - using liquid pigments and the canvases’ varying absorption effects to create in collaboration with her materials. Never before had figuration and landscape been referenced through such liquid abstraction.

Monday 24th August

The Moon continues through the constellation of Sagittarius, extending the warm, fruiting quality of the previous day. In the garden, this is a time to notice what is swelling, ripening and gathering sweetness through the long work of summer. Fruits and seeds carry a particular sense of completion, yet they also point towards what comes next, holding within them the possibility of another season. As the Moon moves through this fiery region of the zodiac, we can work with plants that are forming and maturing their fruits, while also paying attention to the balance of warmth and moisture they still need. Late summer asks us not only to harvest, but to recognise when to leave something a little longer, allowing warmth, light and time to finish their work.