Saint Helices 76, 10" x 7" x 3/4", oil on plaster cast, 1998. Artist's collection.

This is a plaster cast made from a plasticine model. The cast is primed and then painted with oil paint. The Saint Helices composition has always had an overall fragmentary frame of reference--a parenthetical or microcosmic point of focus within the scope of a much broader or macrocosmic factors and issues. The organic nature of the sculptural cast brings that fragmentary element to a new dimension--literally. The cast is a physical entity unto itself--not simply a rectangular structure which supports the picture plane.

The edge forms here are half recessed into the surface and half raised from the surface which physically creates a distinct plane of reference for their forms. This was also the case with the "assemblage" edge forms of earlier versions, but in this (and later) cast painting, the distinctive nature of all the elements of the composition are initiated in the organic sculptural ground upon which they are painted.