Accidental Rothko v1.0, 2010 by Chip Litherland

Street art has been a recognized art form for decades, with artists like Swoon, Banksy and Chris Stain getting regular billing in blogs devoted to it. But the myriad gang tags, obscenities and plain old spray paint that abound on city walls (and aren't viewed with an artful slant) are subject to another treatment: more often painted over in quick, half-thought and mismatching colors than revered like their counterpart.

Armed with his Canon 5D Mark II and a self-professed addiction to color, Contender Chip Litherland finds these graffiti cover ups and photographs them in this series of works titled Accidental Rothko. Referring to Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko's use of color, shape and light, Litherland composes painterly photographs of these former etchings of vandalism, focusing on the scene's inherent color fields and shapes, and melding three different viewpoints and motives.

Accidental Rothko v2.0, 2010 by Chip Litherland

In his artist statement, Litherland explains:

The found art photographed in these pages wasn't meant to be art at all, but served a more conventional purpose—to smother the art of others. In essence, this project reclaims them and shows their transition from one construct to their new, yet temporary form. Most of these paintings were made by an anonymous, annoyed business owner or hastily-dispatched city worker. The splotches of color and random pigment have been lathered with a careless quickness and force meant to simply delete the spontaneous thought and scribble of another human. A gang member tag. A graffiti artist's piece in progress. A bored tween with a can of spray paint that his father won't miss. The canvas is temporary. In fact, most of these walls have been already been repainted themselves. The building spaces, which once played a role of makeshift gallery, have been returned to their even, predictable color. For the time being. Some of the cover-ups have multiple revisions. Some show the passive aggressive war between pre-artist and post-artist. What they all accomplish is a stoppage of time and emotion between two humans who more than likely have no idea who the other is. The resulting images evoke the late works of Mark Rothko's large multiform paintings that were completely filled by somewhat errant, yet strictly composed geometric shapes—shapes allowed to flow from their borders into a more organic representation of space. They were meant to overwhelm and swallow up the viewer. These photographs instead allow the room for the viewer to breathe and see the unintended art in their context. In an alley. On a loading dock. Against a foreclosed home. Along the tracks. Anywhere. Just not on my wall.

Accidental Rothko v3.0, 2011 by Chip Litherland

Chip Litherland describes himself as a self-diagnosed color addict. With 10 years of experience working in photojournalism, he is a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, ESPN The Magazine, the New York Times Magazine and TIME. His work has been recognized by Pictures of the Year International, Best of Photojournalism, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, Southern Short Course and the National Press Photographer's Association. Litherland self-published a book titled Accidental Rothko in 2010.