Perceptual Study: Rectangular Abstraction in Blue, White, and Red (2015) uses a limited palette and rectilinear structure to explore how viewers perceive depth, rhythm, and spatial tension within a flat surface. It belongs to my series of “perceptual studies,” works that treat the canvas as a site for investigating visual cognition rather than for depicting recognizable objects.
The work’s modest scale and focus on carefully rendered elements encourages close looking so as to decipher where slight shifts in hue, proportion, or adjacency change the perceived depth and weight of each shape. Thus, this painting’s process was also a controlled experiment in how color and geometry shape visual experience.
In other words, this artwork tests how the eye navigates figure–ground relationships as blue tends to recede, red tends to advance, and white can oscillate between background and active shape. In essence, this allows the painting to stage subtle depth cues purely through color placement.
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Amy Ione
Title: Perceptual Study: Rectangular Abstraction in Blue, White, and Red
Date: 2015
Medium: Oil on canvas board
Dimensions: 20x16x0.5 inches
Unsigned
Catalog Number: 26027