Frances Richardson, Paradise Lost, 2002

I’ve been meaning to write something about Byzantine interiors, but I’m working to some deadlines right now. Instead, here are a couple of drawings by Frances Richardson. Her drawings are made up of thousands of tiny little markings, pluses and minuses, a kind of zero-point-energy field. The distinction between figure and ground can only be made through a kind of averaging: the figure is often no more than a slight disruption of the background. Foreground and background are not different orders of material, just different configurations of the same material. Figures arise out of a field of difference. Above, Paradise Lost, in which Richardson renders only the background of an Orthodox icon, revealing the spatiality of the halos and frame. Below, 020602, is how a hallucinating particle physicist sees a forest.

Frances Richardson, 020602, 2002