Jason Moran (b. Houston, Texas, 1975) created the abstractions that include Honey Sit In and Blue Calamintha during the global Covid-19 pandemic. On the surface, Moran’s work is reminiscent of the work of Mark Rothko, the New York School painter, who also worked with painterly, irregular blocks of color that seemed to imbue his compositions with a spiritual aspect. But embracing the political, Moran’s work during 2020 was influenced by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the uprising for justice that followed. The compositions that arose have a decided elegiac quality, that allow for somber rumination. Moran is internationally acclaimed as a jazz pianist and composer, and he values the interdisciplinary relationships between music and visual artistic practice. To create this series, Moran placed a sheet of paper on a piano and recorded his fingers on the keys. The movement of his hands is tracked in layered lines of saturated pigment, and washes of color, tracing the pull of gravity, or the creases of the paper. These works are the material record of Moran’s private performances. Moody and abstract, varying hues of blue run throughout the works, rife with associations ranging from expressions of melancholy, references to musical “blue notes” and the Blues.