10 September 2025
Keeping acrylic, pencils, and oil on hand during the image-making process of these new works has created a nimble kind of rhythm in which dead ends with one medium turn into fresh starts with another, but it has also got me thinking about material hierarchies. I'm wary of veering too far into formal experimentation for the sake of it, (I'm reminded again of Judd on Joseph Stella over-prioritizing technical experimentation at the expense of ideas), but I do think there is something about the interplay between these materials when permanence is a factor; wax colored pencils and oil don't mix, so there's a finality to the choices made in colored pencil, a commitment to an irreversible decision that is really helping with my intentionality right now. And also seems like it could be somehow wrapped up in what I'm getting at by holding examples of isolation/solitude in the second half of the 20th century with similar material from the first two decades of the 21st.