Mapping the Abstract Cosmos
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 5ft x 5ft
Creation Date: 2024
Collection: Greyscale
“Cosmos' gathers fragments of the moment and renders them eternal in layered abstraction.”
Cosmos (2024) is a painting about vastness — not of space, but of thought. Created in oil on a 60 x 60 inch canvas as part of the The Pulse of Black collection, this work uses restrained monochrome to gesture toward infinity. It is both meditative and charged — a silent hum across darkness.
The surface appears at first glance to be black — but closer inspection reveals a galaxy of texture: deep blues, ashy gray streaks, soft chalk lines that float and vanish. A faint circular motion guides the eye inward, like a distant planet emerging from the void. It is a painting meant for quiet rooms and quiet minds.
I painted Cosmos as a response to inner silence — the kind that doesn’t feel empty, but alive. The kind that holds questions rather than answers. Its darkness isn’t despairing. It’s full of breath.
This piece resonates with the sensibilities of Vija Celmins and Pierre Soulages, who both treat darkness not as absence, but as presence. Like them, I trust that black can be more than final — it can be the beginning.
Cosmos doesn’t try to explain the universe. It tries to mirror the space within it.
