Space Time
1993
Mixed media on canvas
26" x 26"
66cm x 66cm
About the work
A one-line, flat figure loops from foot to hand to foot across a green and navy field, its hand reaching into an invented wooden trellis rendered in perspective — the only dimensional element in an otherwise flat painting.
Direct inspiration
Titled for a space/time concept: the invented, hand-built trellis functions as a time/grid marker, balanced compositionally against flat blocks of navy representing space. The idea came first, from a philosophical 'why' orientation to painting at the time, more than from direct observation.
Context of making
Made in the artist's SF backyard — the same location as Antiquity — during a very early, exploratory phase of oil painting, alongside The Stage, Corner, and the Self Portraits (1993-1995). This cluster represents an early, ultimately not-pursued attempt at figure painting, made before the artist's practice settled into cityscape/landscape work.
In the practice
The artist found cityscape and landscape subjects easier to draw than the human figure, which became the practical (not conceptual) reason figure work was set aside in favor of the cityscape direction that came to dominate the practice. The artist did take a figure drawing class around this period and enjoyed it, but was more occupied with philosophical concept-driven painting than observational likeness — portraiture specifically was never attempted then.
Why these materials
Made using a one-line drawing approach — a single continuous contour, then filled in — which is why the figure reads as one unbroken form rather than assembled limbs, looping from foot to hand to foot.
Francis Bacon — Named directly by the artist as a liked and influential figure during this early oil-painting period — distinct from the later Goethe/Dürer/Appel recognition-not-influence pattern, and from the earlier Renoir-study/Dalí phase.
Francis Bacon · Francis Bacon
Named directly by the artist as a liked and influential figure during this early oil-painting period — distinct from the later Goethe/Dürer/Appel recognition-not-influence pattern, and from the earlier Renoir-study/Dalí phase.
Visual Similarity
Works with similar visual structure, found by comparing image embeddings across the archive.
Related Patterns
Throughlines and bio events that include this work — the same connections shown on those pages, linked back here.
Vision Analysis
A vertically twisting figure rendered as a single continuous line and filled flat — bare feet at both the top and bottom of the composition, a reaching hand at the midpoint — set against a green field occupying the left and lower portion of the canvas and a solid dark navy shape occupying much of the upper right. In the lower right, a hand-built, uneven wooden trellis or fence is rendered with clear linear perspective and dimensional shading, in direct contrast to the flat, line-based figure. The hand grips the trellis at the point where the two pictorial systems — flat line drawing and dimensional perspective — meet.
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