For many years I have been following a trajectory that is set in motion by the last painting. A chronology driven by necessity, the obvious next step. The proportion of the piece is the initial imperative: the size and dimension of the canvas and the containment of the four sides of the canvas that encompass it; the front of the canvas and the encompassing color on the sides.

By applying about fourteen layers of a monochromatic pigment to the sides of the canvas I catalyze an interaction between the ambient light, the viewer's perception, and the work itself thereby destabilizing any sense of a fixed image in favor of a dynamic of shifting relationships. The light reflected from the sides of the paintings cast auras of color on the wall and surrounding space. These ephemeral hues diminish any rigid distinction between the work itself and that of it's environment, and impose a temporal experience of the work given the shifting conditions our perception presupposes.

The paintings are generally 1/8 inch off the floor. This was never my initial intention, but they evolved along this line from earlier work that has step by step become what it is today. It has, though, brought up important issues of the painting as an object (1) because it is "standing" on the floor and (2) because the front is not a picture of anything, always an interesting question to ponder. They remain, however, paintings; acrylic paint on stretched canvas.

The paintings are at a slant to the right, an alignment I call "Tip-to-Tip" establishing the vertical axis from upper left corner to lower right corner; breaking from the static architecturally referenced perspective that paintings hung at a ninety degree angle to the floor have.

This all began 16 or so years ago when I was painting distinct white tilted squares (diamonds), sitting on the bottom center of a red or black painted field. The size of the rectangular canvas in relation to the size of the symmetrical white diamond was what the painting was about, what that relationship evoked. One day I made a slight rectangle instead of a diamond sitting in the field on the bottom of the canvas. It led me to question why I was painting this on the front of the canvas, when the canvas itself can be it's own unique proportion on the wall, defined by its side's painted color field. Relationships of shapes on the front of a canvas has been done ad nauseam. The fascination for me is how to push the boundaries of what a painting can be, while still being moving, dynamic, sublime.

Deborah Salt
Los Angeles
2020