Sweetness

“Sweetness” is a 60 × 60 cm square, white all over. Thick texture in waves, water with ice on top, and in the bottom left corner three tiny dark figures standing waist-deep in it.

From the “Lost World” collection, 60 × 60 cm on canvas, two centimetres thick, many layers, texture technique.

The people here are the size of a grain of rice. Nobody finds them at once. Usually after going over the work twice with their eyes.

I built the white in layers with drying in between, which stood the crests up high so they hold a shadow. There is no colour in the work at all, only grey hollows between the crests.

The sweetness in the title is not about sugar. It is about water on a cold day that you went into anyway.

A small square goes where a large painting will not fit: an alcove, a pier of wall, the wall above a bench in a hall, a narrow corridor.

White on white needs side light. Here it is the only source of the image, and without it a flat pale surface is all that remains.