“Poles No. 11” Painting

While painting previous series utilizing the electric little mark I had discovered, it dawned on me that I might be able to optically mix color by overlapping the tiny skeins of these marks. I decided to try. This piece was the thirteenth of those experiments. The curve in the first study seemed too boring, so in the second study I traced one side of one of the stencils I had made for the previous series for a more interesting curve. I also spaced the curves closer together so the colors mixed more seamlessly. Upon finishing it, it seemed the next one needed more tension, so I flipped the curve to make two positive/negative forms and positioned them at positions derived from the Golden Mean. I made the curves radiate from two of the forms and meet at the third to generate the tension. While painting the first two pieces, which had black, white and grey grounds, the over-spatter from slinging the paint accumulated on the black areas as tiny dots. Everyone who saw it said, "That's really cool...you should keep that". Consequently, when I prepared the next six pieces, I prepared square, black canvases which I positioned to capture the over-spatter for each new piece. I began to see the two panels as "energy" and "space". I changed the proportions of the long panel beginning with "Poles No. 5" to what I thought were more pleasing proportions. While I was cutting the canvas stretchers for these pieces, I realized that I was getting a lot of scraps 10 1/4" long, so I decided to build a bunch of 10 1/4" square canvases. These ended up being incorporated into the next eight pieces turned as diamonds, with this one being the third. I now see the three elements as "energy", "space", and "matter".