This painting was created with acrylic paint and medium on a 10 oz. linen canvas, previously stretched on a wood frame, 230 cm. (91 inches) in diameter.

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When we encounter this painting for the first time, what we first perceive is its relatively large size and its round shape. From the start, this round shape breaks the conventional, traditional square format of a painting — the famous “window to the world.” Simultaneously there is the inevitable impact created by the contrasted and concentric trinity of rings – black, red, multicolor.

I believe these three characteristics of the artwork (large size, round shape, contrasted and concentric rings) are all together apprehended at once.

Then… the “quest” begins: the usual “What does it mean?”

This question can be a trap, however. It is usually this first step that makes our look and mind search for meaning elsewhere than right there in front of us: on the painting itself where the “finding” truly is.

The question “What does it mean?” triggers our intuitive imagination to pursue personal and relative associations for which the painting only becomes a surface of suggestions and pretexts. We build stories and narratives that transform the painting into a phantasmic appearance, if not into a complete illusion. Generally, the intuitive nature of the question “What does it mean?” misguides us to construct simple or elaborated tales to reassure our sudden encounter with a new or unknown object or phenomenon — incidentally an abstract painting.

This imaginative escape can be an interesting exercise — there is fundamentally nothing wrong with this intuitive response to the apparent enigmatic nature of the new object represented by the painting. This is indeed a common automatic reflex expressed by a majority of viewers.

Except that it drives us away from the truth — the truth of what is right there in front of us for our eyes to see, to trace, to discover, to feel and express, describe.

“What you see is what you see.” said artist Frank Stella in 1966; and Ad Reinhardt in 1962: “Art is art-as-art, and everything else is everything else.”

It is a mistake to think that abstract art is created by artists to “stimulate” our imagination to produce all kinds of stories that we invent from the strokes, marks, colors, textures, and shapes painted on the canvas.

Artists discovered and invented abstract art out of the traditional figuration after the revolutionary arrival of photography in the mid-19th Century.

The “discovery” came progressively, triggered by the existential crisis that photography produced to artists. We forget the terrible anxiety artists felt at the realization that photography could do much better what they were painfully trying to do, namely representing the world and its history – what painting has been doing since the beginning of time.

It was tackling this hard reality that artists, working their medium and questioning the very foundation of their practice, slowly and strenuously discovered the unique and exclusive characteristics of what painting really is: a medium of color, texture and form applied on a given surface.

I will come back another time on the long history of the epic revolution that abstract art produced, from the beginning of impressionism to the magnificent climax of abstract expressionism in the mid-20th Century.

For now, let’s come back to our painting.

Let’s start the “quest.”

“What you see is what you see” – so: let’s look.

Let’s look at what we see. And let’s try to look only at what we see, which is what is truly there on the canvas, since… “all the rest is all the rest.”

If we want to know the truth about a painting, the way to do it is to look as exclusively as possible at what we see. The best way to discover and receive the full potential and power that a painting has to offer is to only look at it as it is, and not as it appears to our imagination.

Of course, it is impossible to be completely objective, as it is in pure or applied science. Indeed quantum physic has shown us that reality itself is influenced by the way we look at it.

Still, if we want to understand any phenomenon, analyze any situation, or just find the truth about something, we know we have a better chance if we can remove as much preconception, ideology, or personal imagination as possible in the looking of our subject of investigation or contemplation.

This is also the best way to observe, discover, and enjoy the creative power of painting.

So, what do we see…

For me, the round shape is already intriguing. It’s unconventional as opposed to the traditional rectangle format of the vast majority of painting. There is something exciting about the transgression of a secular norm. There is an affirmation of individuality, of choice — the opening of a possible other, different way. I like that. It is right there, very physical: the square versus the round option.

Then the concentric rings multiplied the round shape impact of the canvas. They reinforce the statement of its distinct individuality. Furthermore, the strong contrast of color between the rings increases and consolidates the focus of attention on this affirmative statement of individuality.

Then, the texture of the surface captivates my attention. There is almost an organic reaction; my stomach is involved; my breathing increases as my eyes discover more closely the bloody skin of the fissured and chapped surface red painted with a large palette knife.

I should not say “bloody skin” since it is a metaphor created by my imagination, which hence becomes involved. Of course, there is no “bloody skin.” I should stick to what is really there: the think red paint applied in several layers of transparency in such a way that I can see that there is a whole universe of action and colors underneath the thick and textured red. This partially hidden underground now captivates my glance while wandering on the ragged glossy surface. Roaming from area to area on the textured topography of the large and red middle ring, I reach, toward the center of the artwork, a hard contrasting edge that also opens on the black core of the painting. The limit between the large red ring and the black center is definite and precise. Yet, I still see some of the red background underneath the black texture covering the center. This makes me feel a sort of organic unity of the whole even though the three rings are clearly distinct and separated. And the strong and deliberate contrast between the red and the black reinforces the statement-like effect of the center, the affirmation of undeniable individual reality.

My attention is mesmerized by the enigmatic intensity of the black center. It’s difficult not to see it as an opening into infinity, just like the black pupil of an eye does when we get closer and closer to it, and the personality of the beholder disappeared into its inner indefinite being.

Admittedly, I am letting my imagination taking hold here. The true reality of what is really there is always more difficult to grasp or recognize than what our imagination can easily project and construct.

If I remain on the surface of the canvas, if I remain on the painting right there in front of me, if I try to avoid leaving this painting for the siren-call and enticing lure of my imagination, if I accept the challenge of the truth that is only there in front of me — then and only then I can discover the powerful reality of the painting.

After the strong pull of the black center, so affirmative in its contrast with the surrounding red magma, I realize that the outer ring has a completely different dynamic. There is a flourishing multiplication of colors and curves and drips and drops and stokes and a variety of free marks that were obviously performed while moving with intensity around the canvas. The diversity of colorful marks brings my eyes to investigate closer their infinite number, creating all together a rich and vibrant surface, lavish in depth and texture by visible multiple layers of transparent blues and greens successively applied.

Here once more, the contrast of this outer ring with the two others is obvious. There is a frivolity in the free performance of its composition, a complete liberty disorderly at play and yet, there is an organic order that makes it all life-like. Life-like all the more that we can see at close that this outer ring is indeed covering the entire underground of the painting over which the thick red textured ring was applied with a large pallet-knife, and then the black core in the center itself applied over the red magma.

I am just starting the adventure. I know that if I stay true to what it is, the painting will continue revealing its creative power for as long as I attend to it, for as long as I look and listen to her.

It’s all there.

I don’t need to go anywhere else than right here on the body of this painting, wander on its skin, adventure in the Quest, and gather the Findings.

C.L.