Jenkin’s print evokes what happens during a solar eclipse, when the Moon passes in front of the Sun.  The light coming from the Sun is white, a mix of all the colors on the spectrum. If the light is refracted--bent through a prism, for example—the colors would separate. Reds, oranges, and yellows would become visible to the eye.

Paul Jenkins was a member of the color field school of painting, a group of abstract expressionist artists that included Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler.  Many of Jenkins’ works of the 1960s and 1970s included the word “phenomena” in their titles and explored the subject of space, color, and light.