Eating Black Square: Tension, Devotion, and Disintegration

Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 5ft x 5ft
Creation Date: 2024
Collection: Organic Movement

Eating Black Square began with a question: What does the black square hold, and what happens when the world around it refuses to stay still? At 60 inches square, this oil on canvas painting explores the tension between containment and transformation. The central black square is deliberate—a nod to Malevich, perhaps—but in my version, it doesn’t float or sit in silence. It’s under siege. It’s being metabolized. It’s not a symbol of purity. It’s food for movement.

Using twine, I dragged, twisted, and snapped lines across the wet surface. Some strokes are sweeping and fluid; others feel more like tears—ripping through surface tension and structure. The twine leaves textures I could never predict: rhythmic, erratic, ghosted, loud. It is a tool of intuition, of disruption, of unexpected grace. The black square resists, but not completely. It begins to fray at the edges. It softens under pressure. The surrounding field of white and gray feels like wind—or hunger. A consuming force. But it’s not destructive. It’s a process of digestion, of breaking down and absorbing what once felt untouchable.

There’s reverence in this painting, but also rebellion. Eating Black Square is about challenging old icons without rejecting them. It’s about what happens when motion encounters monument—when the living mess of creativity brushes up against rigid ideals. In the end, the square remains—but it’s changed. It’s part of something larger, now. It’s no longer the whole statement, just one voice among many. And maybe that’s the point: we don’t erase what came before. We absorb it. We learn to live with it differently. We eat the black square—and we move on.