In the summer of 1949, Leila McConnell visited the California School of Fine Arts. There she met Mark Rothko. According to McConnell, “Mark Rothko came out for the summer term and I painted some apples—a white background and green and red apples—and he said, ‘Why don’t you do another painting and abstract that?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, do flat patterns of color.’ So that’s what I did.”

Untitled is evidence of Rothko’s influence on McConnell. However, McConnell added to and reinterpreted the painterly language she learned from the artist. She took Rothko’s flatness and tonality into the stratosphere, into another dimension. Untitled is a balanced skyscape. The work’s color is flat and harmonious. The silky sky consumes more than half of the composition. The tranquil firmament is rendered in graduated shades of blue and purple. A biomorphic shape resembling a peacock’s plumage grows in the foreground. This golden growth, with its colorful eye and feathery appendages, imbues the work with a surrealist mystique. This symbol, though unintelligible, is evocative and inviting. As a whole, the work offers more questions than answers.

Born in 1927 in Los Angeles, McConnell relocated to Houston with her family as a child. She studied architecture under James Chillman at Rice Institute (now Rice University). Upon graduating, she continued her studies at the Museum School (now the Glassell School) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. From 1950 until 1968, she held an instructional position at the Museum School. Her work has been shown at the MFAH, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Witte Museum.