August Vance · No. 106

Black & Gold

Black & Gold is the collection at its boldest and most elemental. A thick river of gold leaf cuts diagonally across a field of deep, matte, light-absorbing black, the metal catching and throwing illumination against the dark in a contrast as old as Byzantine icon painting and as current as the most assured contemporary design. August Vance keeps the composition radically simple and the gesture utterly decisive — one luminous incision across the void — so that the drama is total and immediate, legible the instant one enters the room. The pairing of opulent gold and austere black is loaded with meaning: it is the language of sacred art, of wealth and mourning, of presence carved out of absence. Here it reads as pure painterly confidence, the courage to say one thing and say it perfectly. The matte black gives the gold somewhere to burn; the gold gives the black a reason to be so deep. Graphic, glamorous and unmistakably expensive, the work commands a wall the way a single perfect sentence commands a page — with economy, authority and an almost musical sense of timing. It is abstraction reduced to its most powerful gesture.

An original oil painting on canvas by August Vance, painted to order — never a reproduction. Large-scale gestural abstraction — sweeping palette-knife strokes, plaster texture and gold-leaf veins in muted, architectural palettes built for grand interiors.

Artist

August Vance

Medium

Oil on canvas

Finish

Unframed, ready to hang or frame

Made

To order, by hand