The “Reflecting Windows” series represents the last four years work and is the end result of many years attempting to create paintings resolved by juxtaposing color and form down to it’s simplest minimal state while maintaning strong compositions, also trying to avoid some of the excesses of expressionism. A desire to not be derivitive and not repeat myself, not seeking something new and different to be “new and different”left me with a formalists feeling that placing the right color next to the right color in various forms and compositions would be a formidable task and worth pursuing but please let me try to explain the process which brought me to what I believe to be my best work.

Refining this method over a six year period a sameness began recuring, a repetition of color and form, a softness and floating quality which no longer worked for me. I needed to take a stand, make a commitment. That commitment would be to color. It had always been my primary concern but now the color field would be intense, a completed painting in itself. Red would be a red red. There would be no intrusions into the field with texture, amorphous shapes or etched lines. But still the field would be the beginning not the finished work. Minimal for me would have to have color elements to resolve the work and the same commitment applied to those elements. No soft edges no ambiguity. I painted a color study searching for a great blue which could then be transfered to a much larger work. A cautious “10 x 8” was used, (#1) in the series. Not wanting to intrude on the new blue, the control colors were limited to the periphery, (#2).I was now using a hard edge which allowed me to trap the color and refine it.

Not quite sure where to go next I did a series of transitional works of which I’m including, (#3) and the one I feel most belongs to the series (#4). Wanting to enter into the field without interuption, I deceided to use parallel and horizental bars attaching squares and rectangles and setting up new problems with each new piece. The last work in this part of the series was 5’ x 8’,(#15) and the problem to be solved was a purple horizontal bar extending 8’ across the lower part of a salmon colored field.

Pleased with the progress of the series I wanted to push further. By surrendering most of the horizontal and
vertical bars the squares and rectangles were very much on their own which resulted in (#24).

Having gone as minimal as I wanted to get I abandoned the color field and pulled the series to the next step. By placing color next to color and relying totally on spatial relationships I found to execute a large work required first a completed small painting done in an almost expressionistic manner, sometimes being almost arbitrary this being the only way to find new colors and compositions. Not a study but a completed work which could then be transfered to a comparable larger canvas, a hard edge approach section by section modifying the colors to suit the larger size. This resulted in (#17) and brings me up to the present,(#31).

I’ve tried to express through painting my personal view. A desire for oneness,a unity and harmony with all things. An attempt to live in the moment, seeing things as clearly as possible, without our past or possible future distorting our view. A search for the truth, our own truth, which is the only truth we can know.

Thanks, and I hope you like the paintings.

Larry Christy