Black / Gray 2013

This work originates in a series of quick, virtually automatic sketches.
Using a black chisel tip marker, I work through thirty to forty sheets
at a time, rarely spending more than ten seconds on each sheet.
And although I maintain a relatively rectilinear format, containing
the composition with a loose and often slightly broken border,
and allowing the twist of an occasional diagonal, the intent is
to tap a liberated space of conception and composition.
These sketches are then interpreted, edited and re-set with
masking tape. The tape is laid down with a conscious effort
to retain the original gesture,to remember, albeit now with
the precision of the hard edge, the spontaneity of the first
graphic mark. So, while once removed, this stage in the work
nevertheless stops short of a measured, geometric reduction.

Evoking the look of architectural facades and the structural workings
of industrial interiors, the paintings slip between realism and abstraction.
Relying on the high contrast of black figures on a pale grey ground
creates a fundamental optical tension that resists a reading of depth.
The overall framing of a loose geometry contains and animates multiple allusions to iconic forms: ladders and staircases, windows, doors, joists
and beams emerge and withdrawal as the viewer navigates between
surface and depth, the recognizable and the abstract.