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A fourth series of canvases, called Concentrate, introduces saturated monochromy to my work. Emulating experiments Yves Klein undertook in a now little-known series of paintings at the outset of his career, I investigated each of the six primary and secondary colors as isolated color-worlds. Unlike Klein, however, I worked at great length, over a period of months and years, building color in layers of increasingly assertive impasto, each layer suspended above its own buffer of varnishes. In the most successful passages color simultaneously emerges from and withdraws into shadow. I was strongly influenced, as well, by distant memories of a series of non-objective paintings on musical themes by a group of (sadly forgotten) Finnish artists which were assembled for a Helsinki exhibition in the mid-1960s; the catalogue for that show, a gift from a family friend, fascinated me as a child.
