Yellow Drift

John Seery was an American color field painter whose work was associated with so-called “Lyrical Abstraction.” The term is connected to an eponymous 1970 exhibition at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT (in which Seery’s work was included) that highlighted a turning away on the part of contemporary artists from a hard-edged, geometric, and minimalist form of abstraction, toward one that was softer, more romantic, and more conventionally beautiful. The artists affiliated with the movement frequently used spray guns or sponges to apply paint to canvas. Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Jules Olitski, and Mark Rothko are artists whose work is sometimes included in this category as well. Seery was represented by the André Emmerich Gallery in New York, alongside Frankenthaler, Rothko, Barnett Newman, Morris Louis, and Clyfford Still. “Yellow Drift” is very typical of the work he created between 1969 and 1971, which was marked by bright colors, sweeping swaths of semi-transparent color applied via spray gun, and scalloped contours.