Stripe painting in the contemporary studio: observation, structure & realism in abstract art

Abstract

A book by British abstract artist Harry MC, bringing together the wider argument of the earlier stripe publications and extending it into the present tense of the work. Written from inside a long practice of observation, fieldwork, and studio testing, it considers stripe painting not as a historical style or a decorative surface, but as a living contemporary language: a way of holding proportion, interval, edge, and colour in view without relying on depiction. The book moves across perception, information, global pattern, digital conditions, and contemporary practice, but always returns to the same central question: what can painting preserve when resemblance is abandoned?

Contents

Introduction: The persistence of the obvious -- Perception. Edge detection and the primary visual cortex -- Spatial frequency and visual processing -- Temporal dynamics and eye movement -- Perceptual organisation -- Encoding. Information theory and visual structure -- Kolmogorov complexity -- The stripe as interface -- Global pattern. West African stripe traditions -- Japanese Shima culture -- Central American and Andean stripe traditions -- Islamic architecture and the Ablaq tradition -- Why stripes emerge independently: Convergent solutions -- Digital conditions. The pixel grid as infrastructure -- Glitch aesthetics and stripe emergence -- Screen viewing and the limits of reproduction -- Contemporary practice. The problem of continuation: Stripe painting after Modernism -- Provence to Bath: Place as methodological structure -- Ochre and continuity: Material as methodology -- Process as research: Making as inquiry -- Viewing as encounter: Conditions for perceptual engagement -- The observation cycle: Fieldwork, filtering, and studio method -- Abstraction and observation. The realism paradox -- Notation without performance -- Merleau-Ponty in Provence -- Colour as structural information -- The knowledge of making -- After the image -- The stripe in the present tense. Black ground: Stripe painting and archaeological material -- The hard edge: Lignes d'Arles and the White Wall -- Stripe painting on screens: Physical practice in a screen-mediated culture -- Final note: A living practice.