Roma XIII

​Though the color palette of Emerson Woelffer’s Roma XIII is dark, muddy, and muted, there is a lightness to the casual application of paint. This sense of ease is most palpable in the letter forms, which the artist scratched onto the surface with a paintbrush handle. The large, central white “X,” the black inscription “Roma XIII,” and the illegible scribble have the relaxed character of a grocery list or a quick, unplanned note. Inspired by the improvisational structure of jazz, as well as European surrealist artists’ techniques for painting in a spontaneous, automatic manner, Woelffer approached his canvases without preconception, commenting, “first I paint, then I think.” His script style further flattens out the solid, abstract shapes underneath by treating them as a two-dimensional writing surface.