131 Subtraction of Fire

The Early San Francisco paintings mark a shift in my practice. The vertical color fields remain from earlier work, but now they serve as anchors for something more symbolic. Across each surface, a single gesture breaks through the structure—sometimes calm, sometimes abrupt—like a brief signal moving across space. This is also the period when the titles begin pairing a number with a short phrase, a format I carried into many future series. Looking back, these paintings sit at the point where structure and spontaneity begin to work together, opening a clearer path toward the ideas that shaped the years ahead.