Abstract Blue Skyline in Textured Brushstrokes — Print & Oil Painting

No drawing appears in this picture at all. A city has been arrived at purely through the placement of blocks: a band of vertical slabs in navy, cobalt, cerulean and near black runs across the middle of a wide canvas, each block a separate loaded stroke with a squared off top, and because they vary in height and cluster unevenly the band reads as a skyline without one line being drawn.

Above that band the paint turns to white and pale grey, scraped on thickly and worked over itself many times, with a few faint warm patches breaking through from an earlier layer. It serves as sky but is treated exactly like everything else on the surface, which keeps the whole thing flat and physical.

Below, the same white takes the entire lower half and the blues come down into it as long vertical drips and pulls that thin as they descend. That is the only illusion the painting permits itself: water, or the memory of water. Two small marks of orange gold sit low and left of centre and are the sole warm accents in a canvas otherwise built from blue, white and grey.

Proportion matters here. The canvas is roughly twice as wide as it is tall, the skyline band occupies a narrow horizontal strip near the middle, and the great weight of empty white above and below it is what makes a small quantity of blue feel like a city. Part of our Vietnam collection, near a skyline ablaze with sunset clouds and an abstract geometric stilt village reflected in golden water.