DELIBERATE GRAY

Some time ago ago Sara and I drove up ro Ottawa for a poetry reading of hers. In the National Gallery of Canada we saw Brice Marden's 12 ft. + triptych from 1970, Three Deliberate Grays for Jasper Johns. The story goes that Brice phoned Johns to ask him if the title was OK. Johns replied, "Sure, as long as the grays are deliberate." I had this notion to set up a group of canvases with more or less spectral grounds, some primaries, some secondaries, a gray, a mauve, and so on, and then to mix complex tertiaries pushed to one end or the other of their value--essentially grays--in response to the ground color. It wasn't until half way through the group of 12 that I thought of that afternoon in Ottawa in front of the Marden and the phrase, Deliberate Gray, stuck in my mind. Deliberate is a paradoxical word; on the one hand it means to pause, to hesitate, and on the other, it means on purpose, with full conviction. When I paint I do both.