Milton Avery

black sea

birds over sky

white wave

advancing sea

oregon coast

sally

What was Avery's repertoire ?

His living room, Central Park, his wife Sally, his daughter March, the beaches and mountains where they summered; cows, fish heads, the flight of birds; his friends and whatever world strayed through his studio : a domestic, unheroic cast. 

But from these there have been fashioned great canvases, that far from the casual and transitory implications of the subjects, have always a gripping lyricism, and often achieve the permanence and monumentality of Egypt.

Mark Rothko on Milton Avery