Arlington Weithers b . British Guiana 1948 ; works in New York , USA
White : Crossing , 2017 Acrylic polymer emulsion , pigments and glass beads on canvas Courtesy of the artist
Guyanese-born painter Arlington Weithers migrated to the United States in 1969 and emerged among an esteemed group of Guyanese visual artists who have gained international reputation .
Weithers employs the experimentation of form , material , and technique of Modernism to create White : Crossing , part of his series of large-scale white paintings . The surface of the work is richly textured , defined by its grandiose play with light , shadow , and the luminosity of acrylic paint . A glorious white dominates the top half of the canvas , becoming both receptive and reflective of light and shadow . Here , the white allows for a response to the movement of the world around it . Yellow , punctuated with blue , red , green , purple , and pink , form a terrain on the bottom half of the canvas , suggestive of a Pangea landmass . Their fissures and ripples reveal the painterly gestures of the artist and the “ coloristic intensity and textural complexity ” he identifies with the tropical landscape of his homeland Guyana . Two narrow horizontal lines just below the canvas ’ s center , their colors faintly visible , allude to liminality as a “ creative crossing ” into unknown spaces , an idea referenced in the title . Weithers states that in his desire as an artist to move past limitations of abstraction , White : Crossing is itself a “ threshold work .”