Blue Space 1917

Kazimir Malevich made this work, called *Blue Space*, with pencil, ink and blue crayon on paper. It's a rectangular picture within a rectangle, and inside, a few dark circles hover with a line slashed across them. I wonder if Malevich had similar thoughts that I do when I'm making something – that feeling of, “where am I going with this?” You know, the initial idea just evolving and changing as you go. With his Suprematist paintings, he had to be asking himself a lot of questions, looking for that feeling. Look at the way the circles seem to recede into the distance. The texture of the paper almost looks like a night sky. That oblique line suggests movement. Does it tie the picture together? Does it slash it apart? We all look at each other’s paintings, and in a way, are always in conversation, picking up on each other’s thoughts, elaborating on each other's ideas. And that's how painting evolves. It’s alive and ever-changing.