Mark Rothko "Orange and Red on Red"

Jay Rolfe was impressed with the Rothko room at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. It was a small, poorly lit room with 4 large Rothko paintings, one on each wall. The idea was a place to contemplate the paintings. Rothko said he painted large pictures to be "intimate," so the viewer would feel like he was in it rather than outside the experience. Rothko said he was expressing basic human emotions, and that the "people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."

Today's photo is one of the 4 large Rothko paintings in the Rothko room, "Orange and Red on Red." It does really seem to require large size and an in person viewing experience to appreciate it. It was painted in 1957.

This is the latest step of artist Jay Rolfe on his Journey From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso. You may view some of Jay Rolfe's signature style, his innovative 3-D Shaped Stretched Canvas paintings, on his website at http://www.3dssc.com/.