Finite Growth continues the hand-drawn circle matrix technique and adds a greater degree of abstraction through the use of colour and brushwork. I am particularly drawn to the bold abstractions in the rectilinear forms – these extreme reductions – that border on symbolic language like that of flags or signage. This harkens back to my days in art school, where I often made use of street signs as ‘found paintings’ that somehow had an added dimension of calling us to obey or adhere to them. Paintings rarely do this! I was trying to lift this power and effect, I suppose.

I am experimenting with naturalistic colours here and there in this work as well. Where Guston was a fan of cadmium red, I am finding myself drawn to permanent red, and how it plays so well with magenta. It seems I cannot help but approach a mentor of mine! These figures at the bottom also evoke his crowded and overlapping figures, albeit in a far more structured and generalized fashion. The sky in this work is particularly naturalistic for me, in the sense that all natural phenomena are derived from some unseen order, pattern or structure that could be incomplete, and thereby forever perplexing. I guess this is the thinking behind the title of the work.