Around 1977, Sam Francis began producing grid paintings structured by vertically and horizontally intersecting lines. Prior to this period, his works often featured layers of colored lines interwoven with square openings of white light. From this point onward, however, these elements developed into a more regular and systematic network of vertical and horizontal lines. The grid can be seen as a net cast over light or space itself; its inherent order suggests an infinite continuation beyond the edges of the canvas, making the expansive nature of the composition visually explicit.
In 1977, Francis used paint rollers to create the straight lines of his grids. Employing round brushes, flat brushes, sticks, and rollers, he gradually built up the overall composition, repeatedly revising the surface and redefining its principal forms. In this work, the grid is articulated through drips and splatters of red, yellow, blue, and green in varying intensities. Beneath these overlapping colors, a faint yellow-green grid—likely applied first with a paint roller—can still be discerned, revealing the underlying structure upon which the composition was constructed. The organic bursts of color appear alternately as masses, lines, and dots. Variations in pigment density further animate the surface: the intersections of the grid are outlined in deep, saturated blue, while the linear sections are rendered in nearly transparent tones that approach white, allowing a subtle light to permeate the composition.
At the museum’s 2018 exhibition Layers of Nature: Beyond the Line, Shingo Francis, the son of Sam Francis, created a new work titled Matrix (2018) in response to this painting, and the two works were exhibited together. Both are monumental paintings of nearly identical scale, and when viewed side by side, their shared grid structures reveal a striking inversion of one another. Whereas Sam Francis’s grid is formed through organic layers of color without sharply defined contours, Shingo Francis constructs a geometric grid with precise outlines. In contrast to Sam’s dynamic eruptions of color, Shingo employs subtly tinted whites, from which orange, purple, blue, and pale green quietly emerge and diffuse across the surface.Seen together, the two paintings illuminate both the affinities and differences between the artists. They reveal a shared pictorial foundation rooted in the exploration of light and space, while at the same time demonstrating how each artist transforms those concerns into a distinct visual language.