Buskin - Morris Louis

A 1960 Color Field painting by Morris Louis, featuring poured translucent pigments on raw canvas that create a soft, atmospheric vertical composition.

Buskin, created in 1960, belongs to the series of works known as the Veil paintings by Morris Louis. This piece demonstrates the artist's method of pouring thinned acrylic resin paint, specifically Magna, onto unprimed canvas. By tilting the canvas, Louis allowed the pigment to flow and soak into the fabric, creating translucent layers that overlap and merge. The result is a composition where the paint appears to exist within the weave of the canvas rather than sitting on its surface.

The visual structure of Buskin is defined by a series of vertical bands that fan out from a central point, creating a shape that suggests a suspended, weightless form. The colours, ranging from deep greens and browns to subtle hints of red and blue, bleed into one another at the edges. This technique removes the presence of the artist's brushstroke, shifting the focus entirely to the interaction of colour and the physical properties of the medium. The edges of the colour fields remain soft, as the paint has been absorbed by the raw canvas, leaving a halo effect around the primary forms.

Louis was associated with the Washington Color School, a group of artists who moved away from the gestural style of earlier abstract painters. Instead, they explored the optical effects of pure colour and the flatness of the picture plane. In this work, the lack of traditional perspective or representational subject matter invites the viewer to engage with the chromatic relationships and the rhythmic flow of the poured paint. The composition is balanced, with the weight of the darker tones anchored towards the centre, while the lighter, more transparent edges provide a sense of expansion. This print captures the subtle gradations and the atmospheric quality of the original work, maintaining the integrity of the artist's process.