A painting that is also a thought experiment. I love Post Painterly Abstraction (PPA). As a modernist style, it makes clear, concise and bold statements that are hard to discredit: the medium is the message; a picture is just a flat surface smeared with paint, etc. But, like the oak tree in Aesop’s fable about the Willow and the Oak, PPA is quite a rigid movement. On the other hand, I also love Monet’s Rouen Cathedral paintings- the series recording his intuitive survey of colours illuminating that gothic church at different times of day. Back to my thought experiment: how to respond- as Monet might- to my landscape, with the vocabulary of PPA? This study of the Barren Grounds Nature Reserve, NSW, is one possibility. From an ongoing series, including the related works Dusk and Noon, exploring landscape, using formalist techniques in varying degrees of abstraction.
