Something happened when you saw this. What was it?
Abstract Inquiry · 2023
A Study in Black & White
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
The study that became the work — black and white held with the seriousness of something that gave up color to find what was underneath.
A Study in Black & White (2023) is a quiet reckoning with contrast — not just between color values, but between presence and absence, exposure and concealment. Part of my Hand-painted Photography Collection, this 60 x 60 inch mixed media painting offers a meditative inquiry into the image as trace, gesture, and transformation.
Built on a photographic base, the work merges hand-painted marks with grainy textures, creating a layered atmosphere where forms dissolve into shadow and light. The palette is limited, but emotionally rich: charcoal, ivory, slate, and ghosted gradients that blur boundaries.
This piece is not about starkness. It’s about subtle shifts. The black isn’t absolute. The white is rarely pure. Between them is a world of nuance — of hesitation, resistance, reflection. It’s less a study in contrast, more a study in coexistence.
There are echoes here of Francesca Woodman, whose black-and-white photographic self-portraits haunt the edges of visibility. Like Woodman, I am interested in what disappears — and what it leaves behind.
A Study in Black & White is about memory, perception, and presence. It asks what happens when you strip away color: what remains, what sharpens, what fades? It’s not cold. It’s contemplative. A space to feel without the distractions of saturation.
As part of the Hand-painted Photography Collection, this piece continues my exploration of the image as both archive and invention — a fragment of something seen, and something imagined.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 8 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 9 ft or more
- Light
- Natural light preferred — the resin catches it and the color shifts through the day
- Daylight
- Near-black with deep umber and bronze beneath, it barely shifts in color, but a smooth dark surface like this flattens under direct sun. Indirect daylight lets the buried terracotta and oil-slick blue surface.
Lives best in
Living room 5/5
A Study in Black & White earns its place here: the near-black and charcoal fields hold a room without competing with furniture, and the slow oil-slick blue at its edges rewards the long, unhurried looking that a living room allows.
Hotel lobby 5/5
At five by five feet this canvas commands a lobby wall with the authority a hotel entrance requires, and its bronze and deep umber warmth keeps the solitude from reading as cold or unwelcoming to a transient crowd.
Details
- Size
- 5 × 5 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Finish
- Epoxy over acrylic. The resin lifts the color off the canvas and holds it forward, so the surface deepens as the light moves across the room.
- Year
- 2023
- Collection
- Abstract Inquiry
- Palette
- Near Black · Charcoal Gray · Deep Umber · Bronze · Sun-Faded Terracotta · Deep Madder · Oil-Slick Blue
- Weight
- About 45 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 8–12 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Samara
- Texture1
- Form4
- Colour range2
- Palette3.1
- Contrast3
- Abstraction Quotient-3
