Colour as feeling, and the painting that won't sit still

Abstraction asks a lot of a viewer. There's no figure to recognise, no story to follow, no horizon to orient you. There is only colour and gesture, and the disconcerting suggestion that those alone should be enough to move you.

And often they are. Stand close to a field of overlapping reds and blues and something happens below the level of thought — a quickening, a warmth, a faint anxiety you can't quite source. The painting hasn't depicted an emotion; it has produced one.

Take away the subject and colour has to carry the whole feeling alone.

The trick, if it is one, is that we read colour the way we read weather: instinctively, bodily, before language gets involved. A good abstract painting hijacks that reflex and holds it open longer than life usually allows.

People still say their child could do it. Let them. Then ask them to stand in front of the real thing for five full minutes and report back on what their body did.