Action #1

It begins at the bottom — that wide, unbroken sweep of red. It is the ground before anything happens, the breath before the word, the silence in a room about to erupt. Stephen Wessells laid down that vermillion field first, letting it breathe and glow, and then he built a world above it. With a scraper he pushed paint across the upper canvas in long, restless strokes. With palette knives he carved and stacked. With a brush he coaxed curves and spirals that feel almost like writing in a language just beyond translation. The result is a composition that seems to hover — a storm system of blue and white and black suspended over a burning plain.