Ruth Asawa Through Line

Asawa's luminous ink paintings are a testament to the artist's nimble balance of chance and intentionality, displaying controlled brush work alongside effects like blooms, tidelines, and cockling paper. Asawa first held a brush during childhood calligraphy classes, which she credits with stimulating her interest in watercolor. Decades later, she would often use a calligraphy brush when making semi-abstract renderings of the plane trees in Golden Gate Park. Asawa recreated their knotted forms by painting on coated paper, a support that encouraged ink to run and gather in pools. She experimented with similar spontaneous effects in her cast looped-wire sculptures in which dripping wax stilled in its tracks as it cooled. Of her desire to allow the intrinsic qualities of ink and papers to determine her compositions, Asawa explained, "I try to explore the total capacity of materials and techniques and often that takes me where I would not otherwise go."