Back to black, the first gesture, chapter 31 from The Works 2020

After years of travelling,painting hundreds of cards,and learning to listen to the landscape,another beginning quietly announced itself.

Not a new subject.

A new way of painting.

I began covering large canvases with black.

Black was never darkness.

It was space.

A place where every gesture became visible.

There was nowhere to hide.

For years I had been searching for simplicity.Not simplicity of form,but simplicity of presence.

I wanted to know whether a single movementcould carry an entire painting.

Whether one brushstrokecould hold an entire world.

The harbour,the boats,the water,the flowers—

they did not disappear.

They became quieter.

Less descriptive.

More essential.

I was no longer interested in painting what I saw.

I wanted to paint what remainedafter seeing.

The moment before recognition.

The silence from which an image appears.

Looking back,I realise these paintings were another way of listening.

The brush was no longer searching for composition.

It was searching for presence.

Only years later,through Chinese calligraphy,did I discover that this search already had a language.

But the paintings came first.

The black canvases had already taught methat emptiness is never empty.

It is the placewhere the first gesture becomes possible.

Perhaps that is why the series became Back to Black.

Not because I was returning to darkness.

But because I was returningto the beginning.

Untitled (Back to Black series), 2020, Acrylic on canvas, Private Collection