Dwelling

Dwelling by Kurtis Brand

30" x 30"

Acrylic, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas

Bone and cream hold the ground, worked thick enough to catch light. Yellow, coral, slate, and blue sit in blocks across it, with black gathering at the lower right. Drawn line runs over all of it in gold and teal: frames, grids, ladders, small structures set between the color. Nothing is depicted. Everything reads as built.

A dwelling is not a house. It is what happens when someone stays somewhere long enough to make it theirs. This surface has been worked that way, layer over layer, until the marks stopped being decisions and became a place. Square, warm, and dense. At 30 inches it works at close range, where the thickness of the paint shows. Good in an entry, a hallway, above a console, or grouped with other work.