Don't refer to Douglas Diaz's paintings as simply black-and-white. "It used to drive me crazy," says the American artist whose latest body of work -- collectively titled "Love" -- is currently on show at Woof Pack Gallery in Bangkok.
While Diaz's abstract paintings are primarily two-toned, they are made up of a multitude of layers and textures, attempts to answer the question of what exactly love is. Divided into three sections, the exhibition covers a vast gamut, exploring notions of self-love, love for others and love for God.
"I wasn't terribly interested in the idea of romantic love," the artist explained -- although the seemingly common theme allowed for him to go beyond the surface. Ironically, he adds, most people encounter love at different stages of their lives but few try to elucidate it.
Initially appearing to be variations on a theme, each painting in fact corresponds to questions the artist asked himself prior to picking up his brush and pencils. Frantic passion, loss and the mental stillness that result from an embrace are carefully thought over and suggested through the works' titles. However, as Diaz settles in front of his canvas, he pictures himself as an "elevator cut loose".
"From the moment I start to draw to the moment I finish, I desperately need to hold on to how I phrased my idea," he says. "There's no thinking, I have to trust that my hand is registering those emotions."
As such, the hand-drawn lines and motifs seemingly float on the surface, as if suspended, or tug at each other with great intensity. The black-and-white backgrounds convey a sense of infinity, plunging viewers into an abyss or surrounding them with limitless white haze.
Ultimately, Diaz believes love is about intimacy and surrender -- the latter being the theme around which he built his previous Bangkok exhibition, at Serindia Gallery in 2016.
Opening up and being vulnerable are main components of Diaz's work as well as his personal practice, and he readily admits that he was at first startled by how little he had thought about the notion of love.
"My language was very naive, because it was borrowed from popular culture, from songs, movies and poetry," he explains. Love demands acceptance, too. Case in point: Diaz chose to display on canvases some of the poetry -- which he describes as "bad" -- that he wrote in his late teens. "I don't have to like them, but eventually, I need to accept them as part of myself," he added.
Diaz's use of graphite pencils, in addition to brush strokes, confers on his paintings a sense of intimacy. Often, pencils are the tools we first encounter in our lives, and there is a refreshing simplicity and humility to their familiar line.
"Graphite isn't actually black," Diaz argues, referring to his usual colour palette of black, white and "accidental" shades of grey. Half-jokingly, he says it will be at least another 10 years before he uses colours.
