Presence Absence

Presence Absence (2024) advances a new series of vertical-format soft pastels on archival paper. These works on paper share the structural proportions of my large-scale vertical oil-on-canvas paintings. For the past thirty years, I have intermittently returned to soft pastels as an intimate, immediate counterpoint to the labor-intensive demands of creating large-scale series of paintings. Applying the powdery medium directly with my fingertips creates highly evanescent, soft-edged vertical bands that blur the lines between color and value. Ultimately, this tactile, visual subtlety has come full circle, deeply informing the advancement of my large-scale oil paintings.