Mary Heilmann, “Negative Space One” (2014), acrylic on handmade paper, 11 1/2 x 11 1/2 in; “Negative Space Two” (2014), acrylic on handmade paper,12 x 15 in (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic ...

It's easy to interpret the large, dark paintings of Mark Rothko's final months as bleak, the work of an artist whose long struggle with ill health and depression ended when he took his own life in ...

“The progression of a painter’s work,” wrote Rothko, “as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity, toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, ...