"My art was always about something," Grace Hartigan has said,1 explaining that even paintings that seem nonrepresentational refer to her feelings about a place or a poem. December Second is clearly abstract; its title refers to the date when the painting was executed, visible-along with the artist's signature-in the lower right corner of the canvas. Nevertheless, the picture suggests various associations-a landscape, a still life, a figure-to different viewers.

On a formalist level, this is a dynamic, motion-filled composition in which dramatic strokes of black, white, purple, and green contrast with large areas of vivid, visceral red, set above a ground plane constructed of several shades of gray. Like most of Hartigan's work, this piece was painted quickly, giving it a sense of freshness and fluidity.

The year in which she executed this canvas was an important one for the artist: her career was at a high point; she had recently made her first trip to Europe; and that autumn she had fallen in love. Presumably the unsettled, intense quality of this painting reflects Hartigan's emotions during this time of personal and professional change.

1 Quoted in Suzanne Muchnic, "Artist's Work Is Back in Fashion," St. Paul (Minn.) Sunday Pioneer Press (reprinted from the Los Angeles Times), 5 August 1984, E-4 (photocopy in National Museum of Women in the Arts files).