Having written recently about Late Monet as well as Wayne Thiebaud, I’ve become more aware of how my own work from perception - using “my own eyes”, as Diana Thater puts it - has led me to push against the constraints of painting from observation - using separate frames to enlarge the compositions and to expand their centralized view - but particularly to address the problem of color and my over-riding impulse to enhance its resonance; this seems to be the goal, to insist on the value of color in itself, not just as an agent of description. This seems to happen in Thiebaud’s use of “halation” and simultaneous contrast, and Monet, of course, reached a similar point in his late work.

Having gone back to paint very simply from looking at the park I’ve painted for years, I find myself entering the world of my collages, as the colors become more insistent and define a particular resonance; at that point rather than continue working on the rendering of objects, I’ve decided to add colored squares to the composition - violating some unspoken rule I’d always had about the sanctity of the visual field I perceive, but to extend my development of color orchestration in the painting. I realize that my early urge to add collage to my acrylic paintings might reflect a similar desire to “bring color forward”, to achieve the “three dimensional opticality” Greenberg found in both Pollock and Monet.