The first mark is always the heaviest. It carries with it so much expectation.
I load the brush with paint and touch it gently to the canvas. The bristles are full; they carry the weight of fresh pigment. It forms a slight meniscus; the paint held briefly against the surface before settling. Then another mark. And another. Each one leaves a little less behind. Gradually the brush begins to empty itself. By the tenth or fifteenth stroke, the paint has become translucent, the line quieter, as though it is beginning to disappear. Only then do I return to the palette, refill the brush and begin again.
For years I thought this was simply the rhythm of my painting. Now I wonder whether it has also been telling me something about time. Every brushful contains its own beginning and its own ending. It arrives full of possibility and slowly gives itself away. There is no single moment when the paint disappears. It simply becomes less, hardly noticeable, until what remains is a faint trace of what was once there.
This rhythm repeats itself thousands of times across the surface of a painting. I have never counted the marks, though I often catch myself counting in my head, reminiscent of Einstein on the Beach. Perhaps this is why repetition has always mattered to me. Not because it creates pattern, but because it makes time visible.
People often describe my paintings as meditative. Perhaps they are. But meditation suggests stillness, whereas painting feels more like living with time. Each mark asks for attention. The rhythm repeats, but it is never identical. The hand adjusts almost imperceptibly. The brush carries a little more or a little less paint. Every line is both repetition and variation.
Nothing truly disappears. Each mark remains within the next, even when it can no longer be clearly seen; the painting holds every beginning, every hesitation and every dissolving.
My paintings are the accumulation of disappearances.
August 6, 2026