Initially, this piece was started in my early twenties, on a board I found by the side of a Brooklyn street, covered with loose graffiti. I’d started painting on top, incorporating the tagged forms as the basis for a linear structure and pencil scribblings, but set it aside, unfinished for over a decade.
In an effort towards artistic recovery, I pulled it back out several years ago, deciding it would be the basis for an experimentation with color, choosing it specifically because I didn’t think I’d care if I ruined it.
I was surprised by how drawn in I became. I found myself moved by shapes divided and connected in unexpected ways, effects of colors placed this way or that, transformed by glazes which I had begun to harness without objective understanding, by illusions of light that shifted, grew, and ebbed depending on minute applications. It reawakened a sense of freedom in curiosity.
Because of my novice skills, it took an incredible amount of time, patience, and reworking to get to a place that felt finished, but I’ll forever think of this painting as a gateway to reconnecting with creative inquiry. Its purpose was, from the beginning, discovery.
