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Larry Poons liked to really overload his canvases. In #15, he overloads without creating even a bit of chaos. Unlike many of Jackson Pollock’s gestural works where lines and loops create turbulence and spider-web-like patterns, Poons’ thrown and poured paint mostly all just flows down. This 1972 acrylic painting on canvas is just over nine-and-a-half feet tall and a little over seven-and-three-quarters feet wide. The canvas is filled with a dazzling pearlescent cascade of slender, thickly-textured rivulets in every color of the rainbow, mostly in understated pastels. One bright patch of burnt orange hovers near the upper left corner, wider at the top and then narrowing, like an upside-down flame. The bottom edge of most of the rivulets follows an arc along the bottom third of the canvas. Below the arc, streaks and dabs of olive green, turquoise, and lilac bring to mind a wildflower-laden field with grasses growing taller as they reach the right side of the canvas. These accent colors were applied with a brush, sometimes daubed or smeared. Lilac and gray-blue were brushed into a soft blur along the right side of the bottom border like dark fog settling in.

The poured paint is thick, and its texture is lumpy. The ridges and bumps all over create areas where light hits with a glistening effect that makes the painting even more luminous. There are no geometric shapes or figures anywhere on this canvas. But the curtain-like quality of the rivulets streaming down might evoke a sense that perhaps there is some secret hidden within, even if that secret is only how on earth Poons can throw paint and end up with something so smooth, fluid, and tranquil.