Paintings & Drawings2020produced

ABSTRACT STORYTELLING

Red, black and white, and a story told with no picture in it

A canvas crowded with red and black marks: a scribbled knot at the centre, a black star, a heavy black and red mass along the bottom edge

A white canvas with a red bar crossed by a black scribble, a ringed red target at the top left and a second at the bottom — Two targets, and a bar being scribbled over.

An upright canvas with a solid black disc, a black line falling through it and a red bowl shape at the base — A disc, a line through it, and something to catch it.

A run of canvases and boards in three colours only: black, one red, and the white of the ground. No figures, no objects, nothing that stands for anything — and yet each one is built like a sentence. Something enters at speed, something else stops it, a small mark answers from across the canvas, and the eye is made to travel between them in an order the marks decide.

Close view of a broad red sweep across white canvas with black lozenges lying in it and a red and black eye at its end — Close in, the red stops being a shape and becomes a surface.

Close view of a black scribbled knot drawn over a thick red diagonal bar — The knot is drawn on top, after the red had dried.

That is the whole proposition, and the name is the plainest description of it. A story is a sequence, not a subject. Take away everything a picture usually carries and what is left is still able to make you read left to right, pause, and look back.

The same kind of black scribbled knot on bare white canvas, with a small ringed target to its right — The same knot with nothing under it.

A nearly empty white canvas with one long thin curve, two red dots and a small black and red hook — The quietest one. Three marks and a lot of nothing.

The marks are made fast and cannot be corrected: a loaded brush dragged in one pass, spray thrown from the wrist, a fine line drawn out until it runs dry, and discs pressed on and lifted. Where black and red meet, the red is almost always the one moving.

Four heavy black bars dragged across white canvas with a small red dot above and a black and red streak below — Four bars, dragged in one pass each.

A large canvas leaning against a white wall outdoors, showing black bars, red marks and a red band along the bottom — One of the large ones, outside.

One of the canvases carries its own title inside the series — WHAT'S THE STORY — and it is the one photographed closest, because at that range the red stops being a shape and becomes a surface.