Page 43 - Studio International - November 1967

technical means. In those days, I sometimes worked from created that extend the possibilities of expression.
sketches, sometimes not.
The kind of painting I'm currently concerned with can't You mention an aspect of current convention. Will you
be fully schematized beforehand. In order for me to do tell me how you see the current convention in American
this work, I've made experimentally countless useless, colour painting as a whole and how you see your aims in
embryonic, fragmentary pieces; these were in the nature relation to it?
of instruction and discovery. Because of these experiments A great deal of current abstract painting is made by
and working experiences, I can now visualize a result as I laying colours next to each other in various numbers and
conceptualize a painting. One isn't only dealing with degrees of complexity. The best practitioners have created
colour as colour, but utilizing the potentials of the paint an art that focuses purely on the qualities of colour;
medium—paint quality, the fracture of surface. splendid work, rich in emotional impact, has been pro-
duced in this way; however, those not absolutely com-
This implies a different solution than the use of the weave mitted to systems and to what they imply in the way of
and texture of unprimed canvas as a unifying element. limitations and refinements, both of the means and the
Yes. The use of canvas texture— unprimed or primed—is medium, might do well to consider colour more broadly,
an important convention, but other surfaces can be in the spirit of experiment, if need be. The schooling that

Albert Stadler
Reef 1967
oil on canvas
102+ x 68 in.
Poindexter Gallery, New York
Photo: Nathan Rabin