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
1. Context: Representation in a Post-Certainty Era Realism has always negotiated with truth. In the nineteenth century it mirrored an empirical world; in the twentieth,
AI automates certainty. Painting tests what remains human. I grew up around engineers, although I did not realize at the time that discussing programing logic
I tell people I live in a ditch. They laugh, and I let them, because it’s true. Against my better judgment, I chose this ditch
Here are some thoughts about where realism stands now and the role Structural Omission plays in it. In this Post-Certainty era, everything’s predicted, optimized, and
The Culture of Endings We live in a culture addicted to endings. Every Netflix series is engineered for the cliffhanger. Every news headline promises the
Venetian Red (an iron oxide earth pigment, like other reds and browns used as grounds) was invented to disappear. I use it to interrupt. It’s
Deborah Scott, The Path Split Long Before She Noticed, 24 x 40 in, oil on canvas, 2025. An example of Structural Omission, where disrupted realism
Some truths may not be hidden. They may be simply out of reach. No matter how long you look, how well you draw, how
Everyone leaves something out. But not every absence is structural. In contemporary painting, omission is often framed as poetic ambiguity, suggestive editing, or a refusal
At some point, someone taught us that the story begins.A clean start. A rupture. An unanticipated twist.Voids that can’t be ignored or explained.And the
