Contemporary Abstract Expressionism I Warm Wind over the River

This painting looks like a companion to “Terracotta Wind” (Old Brick, Leiden), with the same warm clay palette, but here the colour is richer and gathers more strongly on the right. The left side is pale and airy: white, soft lilac-grey, and cream, swept with a few thin streaks of peach and a dark grey accent, like mist or a bright sky. The paint here is dragged in long, sweeping strokes that run diagonally downward. On the right, the colour deepens. Terracotta, caramel, and warm peach fill the upper right, and below them a large mass of oxblood, burgundy, and deep brown spreads across the centre right. Smaller patches of rust and maroon trail down toward the lower centre, with a dark, almost black point near the bottom, where the colour is most concentrated. The strokes run mostly from upper left to lower right, so the painting has a strong diagonal movement, like wind, a landslide of earth, or the sweep of a river bank. The paint is thick and textured, laid on with a palette knife, with white scraped over the darker tones so they break through in fragments. It reads as clay riverbanks in winter light, red earth under a pale sky, or the warmth of old brick softened by mist.