a black & white study
u n t i t l e d , b l a c k & w h i t e s t u d y, with gloss and graphite on wood, 60 x 45 x 3 cm, 2021, private collection
Can one achieve visual alacrity in grisaille painting?
In my ongoing exploration of greys, blacks, and whites, I focus on altering the ‘mood’ at the inception of each new piece. Typically, I commence with white gloss, then introduce graphite and charcoal, allowing concentrated materials to precipitate and float, eventually diffusing into soft, granular textures of varying density.
My fragmented archive of images often includes x-rays—captivating in their own right. I am particularly drawn to x-rays of paintings, which reveal the artist’s decision-making process and the layered history of a work. These glimpses into a painting’s ‘petticoats’ offer tantalising insights, though the full narrative remains elusive.
Reversed nature unsettles
X-rays possess the uncanny quality of black-and-white negatives. Their reversed nature unsettles, as images emerge from darkness into spectral fluidity, culminating in a transparent, ‘white’ clarity.
I also reflect on Matisse’s The Moroccans (1916), where the sculptural presence of figures and the intensity of heat are rendered in bold black. Here, black simplifies, divides, and unifies the composition, framing volume and colour. Despite the painting’s flatness, black dominates as the most circuitous and overriding form, its saturation nearly scintillating—bold as a Chillida drawing.
A cellular, illuminated dance
Untitled serves as a negative of earlier works in this series—not solely due to the use of black but also because the meandering pools of material coalesce into a loose stack of blobs.
This modest image gains boldness, as if illuminated from an imagined depth. The shapes appear to coagulate into a cellular dance, gradually forming a defined entity. Landscape transforms into a figure, emerging slowly from a glowing, fictitious, primordial, oily depth.