James Little USA, b. 1952

This work is part of James Little’s ongoing series of large-scale, black on black geometric paintings. This series represents the culmination of the lifetime of mastery Little has earned—mastery that places him on the technical and conceptual vanguard of contemporary abstract painting. Little is renowned among his contemporaries for his masterful grasp of color relationships, a mastery immediately evident in his vibrant and luminous, multi-colored geometric paintings. Little takes his knowledge of color to new experiential heights in his black paintings, inviting the eye into a nuanced and delicate aesthetic exploration of the emotive properties of tone, pattern, and light.

In these powerful works, Little turns the ability of the human eye to perceive subtle differences in a single hue into a sumptuous journey into the meaning of perception.

Though they consist of fewer hues, these paintings are nonetheless quite laborious for Little to make, as they are made with his handmade encaustic mediums. Working in his New York studio, Little utilizes a method similar to the encaustic painting technique used by ancient Egyptian and Greek artists, blending handmade pigments and binders with hot beeswax. A time-consuming and elaborate process, it allows Little the agency to create completely distinctive hues from hand-ground pigments and custom binding ingredients.

The encaustic paints Little manufactures in his studio have the capacity to last for centuries if properly cared for. The seemingly perfect flatness of the wax surface belies the multitude of layers Little builds up over the course of months while working on his paintings.