2021. 110 x 112 cm / 2800€

Gallery4 location: Opposite wall

The newest of all the paintings in the exhibition, this work, like GOLD, is again reminiscent of 1600 Dutch painting as it moves outward from darkness to light. The top part was originally a deep forest green, but it lacked something. My neighbor, whose profession is the cleaning out of houses, came to me with a gift from one of her cleanings, a box full of brushes and paints. Among the small tubes was only one very large one, a very bright Magenta. I decided to try it on the painting. As it lay across the deep green, the color in the tube was transformed. The florescent aspect of it disappeared and what remained was the perfect level of contrast for the work. For this, it took its place as title of the work, MAGENTA.

The framing of this painting, a wooden structure set inside the work, allows for a sense of floating on the wall. This variation in structure informs the work, underlining the floating nature of the colors as they move gently upwards from bottom to top.

Speaking of gentle, I would like take a moment to pay tribute to the artists who contribute to my world and my work. Ladies first, -the Canadian born American artist Agnes Martin. Though I came to know her work only after I had already painted as I do here, her presence supports this work, albeit in retrospect. Hopefully, her own gentleness inhabits and enhances my horizontal lines.  If you take a step back, you might even see her pencil line in MARYBLUE, though no pencil was used. Her delight in vision beyond the visual may show itself in SUNRISE, her love for precision in WHITEWOOD 3. Like Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Ryman and Cy Twombly (he not so much in these works, but surely in many others in my ÉCRITURE series), this group of affinitive artists who came before me are still at work in my work, informing and re-forming them within their own ever-present contributions. They lend new intensities to my colors and their combinations.  For if nothing exists outside of this timeless, greater whole, then all that we produce is constantly being re-defined by it.

I leave these works now to that continuum that is painting, and invite you to let them startrek through your own many dimensions. I myself will return now to my room, my very own room, for and of peace, to create new ones.

Thank you sincerely for your interest and at best appreciation of my work.