SPECULATION, A Painting in 18 Parts

I began working in the oval format in 2012 as an inquiry into the material potentiality of the oval marks in my paintings. Speculation, A Painting in 18 Parts was painted between 2016 and 2018 as a subset of this work.

The title Speculation, rooted in the Latin specere (to look), encompasses both facture — in the sense of speculation as risk — and reception, referencing conjecture or contemplation. Scaled and oriented in relation to the human head, these silver and gray-scale oval panel paintings allude, however obliquely, to the human intimacy of mirrors and art historical portrait formats such as the cameo.