Scars Heal/Vision Fades

In Scars Heal/Vision Fades colour carries the argument, and only one colour is used: a blue iris at the centre of a field of black and white. The blue is not flat. It is laid in radiating streaks with flecks of white dragged through it, closer to the fibres of a real iris than to a symbol of one, and a thin pale rim runs around its edge like the edge of a lens.

The pupil rewards close attention. It isn't a single black disc. A broad black ring encloses a second, smaller field of blue, and only inside that is the true pupil, a small black dot with two pinpoints of white. Beside it, laid on thickly and standing slightly proud of the surface, is a blob of white paint. It can be read as a catchlight, the ordinary reflection that makes a painted eye look alive. It can just as easily be read as a clouding over the pupil, the beginning of the fading the title names. The painting lets both readings hold, the eye still seeing and already going.

Around the iris sits a tight necklace of small pebble- or cell-like forms. From there the black marks spiral outward in loose rings that could be tissue, rock, or a crowd. The forms grow bigger and lighter as they move out. At the left and lower right they resolve, briefly, into faces and bodies: a profile with closed eyes, a slumped shoulder, something like a reclining figure. Near the edges the brush runs dry and the marks thin to grey before giving way to bare canvas, so the storm doesn't end so much as run out.

Two small things are worth looking for. A very small amount of red paint runs along a few contours, at the far left and in the lower right. It is faint enough to pass for a stain until you notice that it follows the forms, like the last trace of a wound under the healed surface. Fine straight pencil lines also cross the lower right corner and the area around the eye. They are guidelines left from laying out the composition, and they are the only ruled marks in a painting otherwise made entirely by hand.

The title pairs two processes that run on different clocks. Scars heal from the outside in, and here the outer marks are the calmest, the most healed. Vision fades from the centre, and the centre is exactly where that white blob sits.