Red Key
Medium: Pastel on Paper
Size: 2.3ft x 1.6ft
Creation Date: 2024
Collection: Playful Abstraction
“In 'Red Key', abstraction dances gently with meaning, never arriving, always evolving.”
Red Key (2024) is a symbol stripped bare — a pop abstraction that holds metaphor without explanation. This 27 x 19 inch pastel on paper piece from the Playful Abstraction Collection presents a single bold shape: a stylized key rendered in electric red, floating on a flat pale ground.
The key is simplified to geometry — part ancient tool, part modern logo. Its teeth resemble stair steps; its head a circle almost too large. The background is textured but restrained, built with off-white and pale gray, subtly scratched to suggest history.
I created Red Key as an emblem — not to unlock anything literal, but to reflect on agency, access, and invitation. What doors do we hold open? What keys do we carry without knowing?
The work shares a language with Keith Haring’s visual directness and Barbara Kruger’s conceptual power. But here, language is removed. Only symbol remains.
Red Key doesn’t tell you what it opens. It simply asks: are you ready?
