everything at once - an open-ended series of paintings

Music unspools through time - note by note, punctuated by silence. A poem carries the reader line by line down the page, each word advancing meaning in a sequential journey. A film reels, frame by frame, telling a story in sound and vision.

Unlike like these art forms though, a painting is perceived instantaneously, in its entirety (not that deeper appreciation and meaning isn't revealed through longer and deeper contemplation of a painting).

Figurative paintings are hierarchical. Not all elements of a portrait, for example, are equally important to its aesthetic impact. The background is typically subordinate to the likeness of the sitter, or to the emotional charge the portrait delivers to the viewer.

In an abstract painting, by contrast, such as this Mondrian below in the Tate Modern, every square inch of the canvas carries equal weight. Nothing is wasted. No part is more or less important than another.

Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red, 1942. Tate Modern, London. Photograph, Vincent Driscoll

Therefore, abstract painting, it seems to me, embodies this quality of instantaneous totality to an even greater extent than figurative painting. It's an 'everything at once' experience.

Still, hierarchies are evident even in abstract paintings. Some elements can appear to come forward while others recede. It’s difficult for painting - abstract or not - to fully escape the pictorial window, where 'figures' appear to be positioned within 'space'. So how can one begin to dissolve this foreground / background duality?

The yin-yang symbol, or taijitu, offers a model. In Taoist philosophy, yin and yang are not opposites but complementary forces. Each contains the seed of the other, symbolized by the dot of white in the black, and black in the white. One transforms into the other. Night becomes day, rest becomes action, winter becomes summer. The spontaneous dance of dynamic balance. The symbol reveals that duality is an illusion - when viewed from a broader perspective, all is unified. Harmony arises not through dominance, but through balance.

My Everything At Once paintings explore this idea by challenging the usual spatial hierarchies of foreground and background. Through a balance of colour, I aim to create a visual field in which no element dominates, and the illusion of foreground and background dissolves.

I work with colour combinations, or patterns of colours in equal ratios. For example, two colours at 50/50, like these:

Two examples from the series with 50 / 50 colour proportions

Three colours at a 50/25/25 ratio, such as this:

An example from the Everything At Once series with 50 / 25 / 25 colour proportions

Or equally in thirds:

An example of a painting from the series with proportions in equal thirds.

These combinations are intended not only to flatten pictorial hierarchy and dissolve perceived boundaries, but also to evoke a sense of simultaneity, immediacy, even overwhelm. Hence the title Everything At Once. While the series was prompted by a philosophical inquiry, its primary concern is always visual and experiential. The paintings must deliver a satisfying or pleasurable encounter for the spectator, without requiring explanation.

Just as there is no hierarchy between foreground and background, there should be none between art and spectator, or between explanation and experience.

The beauty of a series is the potential it provides an artist for deep investigation and exploration of an idea. Everything At Once has already developed significantly since it was conceived in summer 2024. As the modus operandi involves meticulous planning and execution - in stark contrast to my other series, Propulsion - one idea I'm contemplating is presenting a piece as a set of downloadable instructions, like a kit, so that it is the kit 'builder', not I, who completes the finished painting. This would be similar to the approach Sol LeWitt took with his wall drawings.

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