Triptych, three panels 48" x 36" total size of 48" x 108"
Acrylic, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas
Three separate canvases. One field. The oxblood ground arrives at the edge of the first panel, crosses the gap, and continues. It does this twice. Nothing was stretched to make that happen. The color was laid down knowing the breaks were there, and the breaks became part of how it holds. That is the whole argument. Acceptance is what lets separate things belong together without being forced into one thing. The gaps stay gaps. The field stays whole. Rose, terracotta, and deep red carry all three panels, with grey and black massing through the middle of each.
Drips fall the full height everywhere, through every layer, indifferent to what is underneath them. Along the bottom edge of all three, small pale figures gather and stand, the only forms on the canvas with faces. A ladder stands in the right panel. Someone was climbing. The figures stayed at the base. Both are in the painting and neither one is corrected.
Nine feet across when hung. Deep red at this scale warms a room through, and the horizontal run gives a long wall something to carry. It works above a sofa, across a dining wall, or down a corridor where the eye has room to travel all three.
