Untitled, 1995

Painting, oil on masonite, 44 ½ × 47 ½ in. (113 × 120.5 cm)

Gift from a private collection

This painting was part of Terry Black’s important “Fiery Vision
Bright” exhibition at Regent College in 1995. At the time, Laurel
Gasque identified “an explosive energy entering Black’s painting
[in contrast to earlier works]. Titles fall away. . . One feels Black
moving from seeing with the eye to seeing through the eye” in
ways that “suggest worlds within worlds and dimensions
beyond.” It’s an apt preface to this enigmatic Untitled painting.

The image presents a large stone situated in a flat, empty, snowcovered landscape. The wedge-shaped stone bears markers of
human intervention, not only because it rests on a low, woodframed pedestal but because its straight upper and lower edges
appear to be cut into this form rather than split along striation
lines. Is this a monument with an inscription on its snowcovered face? Is it an ancient megalithic dolmen, reminiscent of those depicted in Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings, such as Dolmen in the Snow (1807)? Is it a contemporary earthwork, in the vein of Michael Heizer or Beverly Buchanan, reimagined in paint? A layer of snow obscures any orienting details.

This painting’s color register generally operates within the cold,
tinted tones of snow and ice, warmed only slightly by flecks of
pink and orange distributed across the surface of the stone.
Indeed, this surface is rendered in such vivid, pointillist detail
that (especially at close distances) its rough, solid form seems to
dissolve into a vibrating energy field. And most enigmatically,
the narrow end of this snowy stone seems to burn with a faint
pink flame. In the heart of winter, it burns but is not consumed.