These essays are where I think in public about painting, perception, and the post-certainty era. They grow out of my studio work and out of Structural Omission, the framework I developed to hold the limits of observation, perception, and knowing inside realist and representational painting.

To cut straight to the theory start with one of these:

Realism in the Age of AI: How Structural Omission Grounds Representational Painting in Perceptual Limits
Structural Omission: A Framework for Representational Painting in the Post-Certainty Era
The Artist Doesn’t Know: Epistemological Limits of Representation

Detail of oil painting Tablas de Daimiel V by Deborah Scott: wetland sunset, Structural Omission, exposed Venetian red ground.

Halfway Between

I am writing this on the plane to Madrid, pen cramped against the tray table, noise-canceling headphones blocking the engine noise. This month has surprised

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Painting of a figure of a woman standing in a patterned interior wearing clock shoes, framed through omissions revealing the limits of perception and narrative closure. By Deborah Scott, part of her Structural Omission framework. Deborah Scott Art.

ICONIC at WMOCA

There is a great pleasure in a museum room where paint still reads as paint. The ICONIC exhibition at the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art

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