Frosted Red SELF

Frosted Red SELF (2026) is the third painting on one six-foot canvas. Underneath it is Circuit Board of SELF, and underneath that, Abstraction (2023). Nothing was scraped away. Each painting was made over the one before.

I mixed a red very thin, diluted with Liquin, and brushed it across the whole of Circuit Board. I expected the layers below to glow through. They didn't. The red went opaque and closed the painting like a curtain.

On the second day I pressed painter's tape into the still-wet surface and lifted it away, hoping to let something through. A little came. Not enough.

On the third day the lower layers were still buried. There was a can of spray varnish lying close by, and I tried it on one small corner. It broke the thin skin of red and Liquin, and the surface began to crackle.

The next morning, the whole painting had frosted.

Now the circuit survives only as something seen through ice. A blue edge at the lip of a crack. A seam of gold, a seam of silver, catching the light. The violet block still holding its shape under the veil. The earlier painting no longer presents itself; you have to look for it.

Somewhere in those four days a very geometric painting moved to another level of abstraction. I did not so much make it as allow it.

Its ArtGram is a Quatrefoil. Texture, form, abstraction and palette reach to the edge, while color range and contrast hold back, everything gathered into one red. Two pairs, balanced across the center.

FArt that listens.