No, I will not make a yellow painting.

Many people have encouraged me to use more color. I have as much control over making my work colorful as any artist has over the content of their work.

In a monochromatic world, I control the tension. That’s all I have to do. And when I’m not distracted by color, I can do this more precisely. The smallest shift in tone becomes deeply meaningful. The practice is defined as obsessive nuance. There are no chromatic distractions. You are observing the purest point of a single idea.

When I try to introduce more saturated blues or a wider variety of shades, it feels overwhelming. I’m unable to justify why I might use this blue instead of that one, and it creates a kind of perceptual paralysis — a color blindness. The reason I introduced blue in the first place is because it seems to be the color that emerges in the absence of color. It is the color of nothing, of atmosphere.

Shortwave blue tones are disrupted by air molecules and scattered across the optical field. Like the ocean or the sky — if you scooped a cup from either, the contents would be colorless. Color, in this sense, emerges only through veiling and accumulation.

The first color I began working with was called Payne’s Grey — a gray tone that takes on a blackish indigo, and sometimes even an earthen green hue, depending on how it’s mixed with white. I will occasionally use ultramarine blue, and only in very small quantities. For me, there’s a kind of truth in this color — a depth, a charge. It behaves in a dynamic way when it hits the eye, unlike other pigments.

Still, I keep color at a distance — respectfully. It must know its place, always at the mercy of the process.