For more than 25 years, Santa Fe–based painter Willy Bo Richardson has explored color, rhythm, and perception through large-scale abstract paintings composed of thousands of vertical brushstrokes. From a distance, the paintings become vibrating fields of color; up close, each stroke reveals its own movement and variation.

The work began with a question Richardson asked while studying at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn: Why make a painting today?

Recently, while preparing a CreativeMornings talk, Richardson revisited the origins of his practice and made an unexpected discovery. After years of joking that he doesn't paint stripes, he realized that he paints rainbows.

His new monograph, Music to Drive To, traces this ongoing investigation across more than 25 years of painting.

Learn more here