Essays
11 December 2025
Colour at the end of the day
Dusk in the Gulf is brief and total. The colour-field painters have learned to keep it without describing it.
The region's dusk is short and complete; the sky changes faster than a brush can follow. The response, in much recent painting, is to stop following and start holding: flat washes that keep the hour as a state, not a scene.
Nothing is depicted, and yet the time of day is unmistakable. That is the trick, and it is harder than it looks.