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Out of Darkness · 2023
Bent Pin in Motion
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
The small thing moving through dark — bent pin as the unlikely protagonist, motion as the dark's most legible event.
Bent Pin (2023) is a meditation on brokenness as potential. Part of the Out of Darkness Collection, this 36 x 48 inch mixed media painting on wood reclaims disruption as a generative force. The “bent pin” in the title is both literal and metaphorical — a small object transformed by pressure, now carrying its own quiet dignity.
Built on a raw wood panel, the piece is constructed with painted layers, embedded materials, and scraped surfaces. The color palette leans toward muted metals — oxidized copper, brushed steel, bruised plum — punctuated by a single curving gesture in bone white. The texture is tactile, even industrial.
This work emerged during a moment of internal friction — when I was questioning the usefulness of perfection. Bent Pin became a metaphor for resilience, for the elegance in something skewed yet still functioning.
The painting shares a quiet kinship with the work of Eva Hesse, whose fragile materials and malformed structures speak of vulnerability as a site of power. Like Hesse, I believe the irregular can be beautiful — even more honest than what’s pristine.
Bent Pin doesn’t shout. It endures. It holds the memory of resistance, of pressure endured without collapse. There’s tension in the form — a line pulled taut, a surface dented but deliberate.
As part of the Out of Darkness Collection, this painting is a small monument to survival. It says: even a bent pin can hold things together.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 5 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 8 ft or more
- Light
- Low ambient light amplifies luminous passages — dark-wall installation ideal
- Daylight
- A pale raw-canvas ground with a near-black frame drawn on it gives strong contrast that stays legible in daylight. The parchment tones warm slightly at sunset, but nothing shifts enough to rule out a bright room.
Lives best in
Hotel lobby 5/5
The monumental stillness of a single skewed form in Spectral Gray and Near Black reads instantly from distance and holds attention through a lobby's noise and foot traffic, offering every passing guest a moment of composure that needs no explanation.
Living room 4/5
At four by three feet, this near-monochromatic study in Raw Canvas and Near Black is substantial enough to anchor a seating arrangement without overwhelming it, and its quiet insistence on survival rather than spectacle rewards the long, unhurried looking that a living room invites.
Details
- Size
- 4 × 3 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Year
- 2023
- Collection
- Out of Darkness
- Palette
- Raw Canvas · Spectral Gray · Raw Parchment · Near Black
- Weight
- About 22 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 8–12 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Spray
- Texture1
- Form5
- Colour range1
- Palette3.9
- Contrast4.2
- Abstraction Quotient4.5
