Golden Plot, a gold abstract oil painting by Ritu Raj (oil on canvas, 3 × 2.5 ft)

Something happened when you saw this. What was it?

Out of Darkness · 2023

Golden Plot

3 × 2.5 ft · Oil on canvas · 2023

Available · in the studio, Phoenix

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The gold that knows where it is going — the plot of warm light against dark ground, the luminous thing with direction.

Golden Plot (2023) is a painting about hidden order — a layered exploration of narrative, logic, and abstraction disguised as design. Part of the Out of Darkness Collection, this 48 x 48 inch mixed media on canvas piece reads like a diagram of something you recognize but can’t quite name.

Grids, fractured lines, and modular blocks interlace over a muted surface of charcoal, sand, and ochre. Glints of gold slice through the geometry — not flashy, but quietly insistent — like emphasis marks in an otherwise coded map. This is not a golden age. It’s a golden question.

I made Golden Plot while reflecting on the role of narrative in abstraction. What if we construct meaning not from story, but from rhythm? From interruption? From placement? The painting isn’t about telling. It’s about arranging. And in that arrangement, something resembling plot appears — even if we’re not sure where it leads.

This work resonates with the conceptual rigor of Sol LeWitt, who used systems as creative engines rather than constraints. Like LeWitt, I’m fascinated by the tension between structure and spontaneity — how one invites the other.

Golden Plot doesn’t reveal its logic. It holds it. It suggests that even abstraction has an architecture, and that even maps without destinations have value.

As part of the Out of Darkness Collection, this piece reclaims precision as poetry — where gold doesn’t glitter, but guides.

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
Gold warms and rises in afternoon sun while the deep grays sink. Indirect light from the north keeps the dark ground present enough for the gold to have somewhere to go.

Lives best in

Hotel lobby 5/5

Strong enough to hold an arrival space, intimate enough to reward a longer look.

Living room 4/5

Golden Plot rewards the room where people slow down. It changes on the second an

Details

Size
3 × 2.5 ft (W × H)
Medium
Oil on canvas
Year
2023
Collection
Out of Darkness
Palette
Deep Gray · Lilac Gray · Muted Gray · Graphite Black · Gold
Weight
About 22 lb
Ready
In the studio; delivery 8–12 weeks

Its reading

Read on the six dimensions of ArtGraph.

  • Texture2
  • Form4
  • Colour range2
  • Palette4.4
  • Contrast3.3
  • Abstraction Quotient4
Read the full reading on ArtGraph →

Keywords

More from Out of Darkness

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Art that listens.