4 June 2025
Matador feels like a small breakthrough. Before it came to be, I realized the grid that I scratched into the purple tree idea must have come, (along with Sasnal's pencil scaffolding), from the Daumier work that Merlin James wrote about for Burlington in 2014 that I mentioned a couple days ago: “The grid, visible through the whole design, evokes bars or astragals as it crosses the window, and across the empty canvas behind him, it as it were, depicts itself, suggesting that that surface too carries such a matrix for future composition.”
The tree wasn't working, so I went in over it led by a vague conception of a figure holding a digital camera at an angle to the sky. Memories of Tessa shooting the sun. The grid-like scratches I was painting over had dried, so they created a topography that instantly communicated with the subject matter; the lines crossing through the figure's line of sight compressed the rectangle (“camera”) shape and the face into a space where a difference in depth between them is implied yet confused, and also added an extra element of push and pull as some parts of the lines disappeared with thicker application of paint.
And speaking of application, this one really taught me something about the relationship between brushwork and wetness of the brush, working color in versus sloshing it on top. I'm wary of getting too excited about the particular path that led to a thickened, buzzing look, as I still think careful intention feels almost prerequisite to an uncontrived resolution, but I really do love the textures and time recorded on the surface. Starting to really agree with Eisenman—can't remember where she said it, but I recall her saying something about how important the surface is to the physical experience of the work, to moving with the artist through an image. At this point that feels not just preferable, but essential and generous.