4 January 2026
Green wood: Originally conceived as an enlarging and flattening of a small bulbous scene reflected in a green vase at my new Wood Green house. Learned that “green wood” is the phrase for freshly-chopped wood that hasn't dried out yet (nice alignment with a cut flower stem). Soft feeling of little lights traveling from a surface to dark depths. But the painting itself became about dueling material impulses. Thick application versus thin staining, muted tones versus the strong light source(s), measured marks versus ones made with momentum. Palette indebted to Joe Brainard's Whippoorwill (1974, the one at The Met). A close examination of that painting, at least from what I can glean in reproduction, reveals a careful, considered back and forth between the warmth of the early layers and the cool topmost ones. The eye also boomerangs across the composition—playing with that movement is interesting to me. And at the bottom of the image, the brown masses that are the floor and the sofa frame sandwich the loveliest bits of color in the tiny space between them—I hoped something similar would happen in my work, and I think it kind of did with the red watercolor peeking through. That handling of color, of restrained use in small space, is attractive. Happened in On diversion too. Something to explore further perhaps.