Green, then yellow, then three blues, then red. For three days it would not balance. This morning I laid red across the whole canvas, put down too much, and spent the afternoon bringing it back with blue — scraping the whole time, so the red comes up through.

Abstract painting Sea Change by Ritu Raj: a combed blue field sweeping down from the upper left like weather over deep water, darkening toward navy at the upper right, with viridian and sea green diffused along the lower edge.

There is no center in this painting. A green world falling vertically, light arriving filtered, the whole surface the subject and nowhere in particular to land. Painted over a black and white canvas from 2024, whose comb still runs underneath.

Four arms of blue flow inward and meet, and at the meeting there is light — brighter than anything that arrived. Painted over a 2022 canvas turned ninety degrees, where the ridges of a painting that no longer exists carry all the glow.

Something in this painting has stopped moving and started giving off heat. A cobalt sanctum radiating ring after ring into an orange field — not a fortress keeping the warmth out, but the source that makes it.

Three simultaneous systems on a single canvas — frame, fault line, and loop. Ritu Raj on the painting that names the moment before resolution arrives.