Art in Speedway: Mark Rothko

I knew when the landscape workers planted the roadside 

last year, that that area along Crawfordsville Road 

would provide interesting colors for pictures.

Last week, while waiting to cross the highway there,

I looked up to see the flowers, grasses, and trees

had grown to provide long bands of color

resembling Mark Rothko paintings.

Rothko (1903-1970) was an Abstract Expressionist whose color field 

paintings employ subtle changes in transparency and 

opacity, light and dark to draw the viewer into his works.

Rothko wanted people to experience his paintings in this way,

in order that they have some emotional involvement

in his work, rather than just view them as surface

decoration then walk away.

Hundreds of people drive by this roadside garden 

each day without noticing the luminosity 

of the leaves, the subtle changes in value

of the bands of color that separate them from the

banal architecture just beyond.

A Mark Rothko painting.