A Terrifying Yield of Control

It is one of those moments when the artist is out of London and I am back from abroad before seeing her again.

The studio is empty. Dozens of paint pots stand in trays on the table. I pick one up—Liquitex acrylic ink in pyrrole red. Most of the others are Daler-Rowney.

An equal number of paintbrushes are tightly packed in a mug, with a bright orange sun-shaped into the ceramic. I had forgotten that mug. We first drank from it, fumbling about in the foothills of our relationship.

Nearby, old plastic takeout trays are piled up, some with dried paint splattered in the folds, each ready for reuse. Various pieces of paper lie on the table, used only to test the brushes—marks like little dabbed claws.

And now, to the work-in-progress. Because you cannot see it—and because unfinished work demands privacy—I must describe it to you instead.

It is a large abstract piece, approximately four feet by five feet. For me, it exists on a higher plane.

At the top left-hand corner, against a body of black paint, is a thin trail of yellow—medium azo lines—within which sits a rare patterned moment of small squares. A smear of plum-coloured paint lies below, plus a patch of lightened cyan blue. Then a black swirl like a horse’s mane.

Throughout this territory on the left, occupied with martial precision, are moments of extraordinary detail—nanoscopic at times, always infinitesimal. That the tightest of brushes can create something so detailed—as if a woodcut or engraving—is astonishing.

On top of this are thin, almost appeasing trails of turquoise, emerald green, more blue—like tiny fence posts—pink ones too, combing the surface.

Then there are these rational moments of greyness, near-bulbous at times, throughout. Is that a blueness within the black-grey? It is as though these moments were once incendiary—burnt gunpowder, the residue of combustion, intimations of a time before the work came into being.

Further down, pockets of orange hues—a family of them—glow. Then back to that blackness again, and thin trails: green lines, blue lines, red dots. It is impossible to convey all of this.

What happens to the eye when it scrutinises such detail? Detail is a visual experience in itself. Not accuracy, but originality. Strictness, thoroughness, carefulness, scrupulousness. A form of exercise.

Somewhere in this untethered medley is a singular curling series of colours, like a conch shell. I see green. I see another green. Purple, orange, brown. Light blue, then deep dark blue—“blue to blue in the night”—more pink, black, orange. All of this moves in a mesmeric circular motion. At its heart: the blue-grey-black again. Around it, a brocade of exquisite blue dots in a line—and pink dots—moving rightwards.

Then an area, almost a palatinate: a cascade of tiny falling petals of flame red and hot yellow. A green wiggle, snake-like. Ripped eyelashes. All manner of things. For me, something as challenging as Bosch.

Elsewhere, below, a burning red—hellish—and beneath it the grey again, an eternal backdrop: not despair, not dullness, but something time-honored, a kind of acceptance.

Further down, an unusual mass of purple, across which fragments of color remain—multicolors as if cellotape has been peeled away. Below that, shapes: reds with foregrounds of yellow, semicircles like Roman heads in green and blue.

Then little inlets like caves—Fingal’s Cave, perhaps, on Staffa. To the right, a cloudburst of red against a lighter background, raining down blood vessels—controlled bleeding—then, above that, reassurance in that jostling yellow-and-red.

Then—when you least expect it—a rock-face of green. Moss-like, flecked with yellow, carrying the sense that even a recent work can hold an ageing process, old, crackling wisdoms that mark a landscape, if we take the trouble to see them.

Above that, more tiny curls, until what looks like the top of a skull, painted in tiny blocks of colour, as if representing one half of a brain’s formerly lucid thought. The rest is left to the viewer.

Then a jewelry of colors—at the top, sparse, controlled. Nothing sentimental. Throughout the work, a terrifying yield.

The artist has done time on this. Opened themselves up. Gone to places we would never go. The bottom right-hand corner offers a waterfall of yellows—stars in a firmament, linked with red and blue lines.

There are lizards of line, paws of detail—a pine-like assemblage of ghost leaves. Again, that grey-blue blotch. Red. More red. Are these steps? Am I being invited to climb into this piece?

Where am I?

The post A Terrifying Yield of Control appeared first on CounterPunch.org.