Between Two Absolutes: My Black and White Abstracts

I set out two paint pots on my studio table. One black, one white.

Two colours. Two voices. Two absolutes staring at each other across the workspace like opponents waiting for the bell to ring.

Life keeps pushing us into either/or choices, doesn’t it? Yes or no. Stay or go. Light or dark. Right or wrong. And here I was, about to spend the next several weeks painting with the two colours that feel most like those ultimatums.

My two favourite colours, nothing else. Black and white. No middle ground. No compromise.

Or so I thought.

The Argument Begins

After completing my “Black Only” series, where I’d spent weeks immersed in pure darkness, bringing white back into the studio felt like inviting a challenger into the room. Someone who wouldn’t let black have the final word.

I picked up my 3-inch brush, loaded it with white and made the first mark on the archival card.

Bold. Confident. Unapologetic.

Then I switched to black and responded. Heavier. Pushing back.

What unfolded over the next eleven paintings wasn’t what I expected. These black and white abstracts became conversations. Arguments, really. Sometimes even duets. Each colour interrupting the other, retreating, advancing, refusing to surrender.

In one piece, the painting feels like a quiet monolith emerging out of mist.

The composition is vertical and centred, almost totem-like. Broad, horizontal sweeps of paint stack on top of one another, creating the sense of layered sediment or folded fabric. The brushstrokes are confident and physical. You can see the drag of the bristles, the dry-brush texture, the moments where pigment thins and skips.

The palette is restrained: blacks, deep charcoal, smoky greys and cool, muted white. Those pale white bands soften the heavier black strokes, giving the middle section a gentle rhythm, almost like waves rolling in slow motion. There’s a tension between weight and lightness,  dense, dark areas anchor the base and centre, while the upper section dissolves into scratchy, fragmented marks, as if the form is disintegrating into air.

The white ground plays an active role. It isn’t just background; it breathes between the marks, allowing the structure to feel suspended rather than solid.

The painting seems to carry a contemplative mood, grounded, slightly brooding, but not oppressive. It feels like memory layered over time or something ancient rising quietly into view.

In another painting, it feels far more restless, almost wind-torn or perhaps time-torn.

The composition rises vertically, but instead of stacked horizontal bands, sweeping diagonal strokes dominate the surface. Broad, curved ribbons of diluted white and black cut across the canvas from lower left to upper right, like gusts of air or fabric pulled tight in motion. They interrupt and partially conceal a darker, more chaotic structure beneath.

Under those sweeping arcs, jagged vertical marks in black push upward. They feel raw and insistent, almost like charred branches, a fractured skyline or the ribs of something exposed. The paint at the base gathers thickly into a dense mass, grounding the composition with weight and gravity.

The background is alive with scratchy, dry-brush textures and linear marks. Nothing is smooth. Even the white feels scuffed and worked over. The limited palette in black and smoky white keeps it restrained, but the energy comes from movement rather than colour.

There’s a tension here between control and disruption. The sweeping strokes feel intentional, almost architectural, while the darker underlayers seem unruly and resistant. It gives the piece a sense of struggle, something rising through resistance or being pulled apart by unseen forces.

It’s dramatic, but not loud. More like a storm held in suspension.

White Returns

I’ve always loved both black and white, whether I’m working in acrylics or oils. They appear in almost every painting I make. Sometimes individually, often together. They’re my foundation, my constants.

But after the solitude of working with black alone, white felt different when it came back. Louder. More insistent.

White, to me, is a new beginning. It’s space to breathe and think. No limitations. It’s open and allows a great deal of freedom. Where black commands with quiet authority, white expands with possibility.

I mixed my blacks as I always do: ultramarine blue with burnt umber for depth, phthalo blue with crimson for coolness, sometimes all three primaries blended for warmth. Each black held its own character, its own temperature.

But white? White didn’t need mixing. It arrived pure, absolute, ready to claim its territory.

The dynamic between them fascinated me. Black would dominate a canvas, and I’d think: this piece belongs to darkness. Then I’d add a single stroke of white and everything shifted. The balance tipped. The conversation changed direction.

The Third Thing Appears in Black and White Abstracts

Here’s what I didn’t expect: even with only two colours, there’s always a third thing.

It happened one afternoon. I was dragging white through a wet layer of black and the brush left a trail I hadn’t planned. Grey. Not mixed deliberately, but created in the moment of overlap. In the friction between opposing forces.

I stopped. Stared at it.

That accidental grey became the heart of this series.

Because that’s the truth, isn’t it? Life insists we choose between black and white, yes and no, this or that. But we actually live in the greys. In the edges. In the overlaps where things blur and refuse to stay purely one thing or the other.

These black and white abstracts taught me to look for those in-between spaces. The places where my brush drags one colour through another and creates something neither colour could be alone. The gaps where light catches differently depending on the angle. The moments where certainty gives way to ambiguity.

I started painting with those overlaps in mind. Not as mistakes or accidents, but as essential parts of the conversation.

Composition as Conversation

Each of these eleven black and white abstract paintings captures a different kind of interaction.

In one piece, black arrives first, laying down horizontal strokes across the card. Then white comes in horizontally, as well, cutting the established rhythm. It’s an interruption. A challenge to the existing order. The horizontal direction created a sort of atmosphere, but not a neat one. It’s messy, human, alive with tension.

Another painting shows what happens when one colour dominates and then gets overwritten by the other. Black claims most of the surface, bold and certain. But then white pushes in from the edges, bit by bit, reclaiming territory. By the end, you’re not sure who won. Maybe nobody did. Maybe winning wasn’t the point.

I worked primarily with my 3-inch brush, sometimes switching to my hands when I needed more intimacy with the paint. The visible brushstrokes matter to me. I want you to see where I pressed hard and where I barely touched the surface. Those pressure variations tell their own story about effort and release, struggle and ease.

The bristle marks show, too. I like that. They’re evidence of the making, proof that a human hand moved across this surface with intention, even when that intention was just to see what would happen when black met white.

What These Abstract Paintings Taught Me About Choices

I’ve spent decades creating abstract art, trying to reflect life’s journeys in paint. The ups and downs. The known and unknown. The hustle and bustle of existence. The light at the end of the tunnel. The beautiful side of life despite the chaos.

Black and white seemed like the perfect colours to explore choice and consequence. They’re opposites. Absolutes. Clear.

Except they’re not.

What I learned while making these black and white abstracts is that tension itself can hold beauty. That you don’t always have to erase one side to validate the other. That sometimes the most interesting truth lives in the conversation between extremes, not in choosing one.

In one painting, black and white occupy roughly equal space. They’re balanced, but it’s an uneasy balance. Active, not static. Like two dancers who’ve learned each other’s movements but still surprise each other occasionally.

That piece reminds me that most of life isn’t about achieving perfect equilibrium. It’s about the constant adjustment, the push and pull, the daily negotiation between opposing needs and desires.

Looking for Edges and Overlaps

When I step back and look at all eleven paintings together, they don’t look like arguments anymore.

They look like a complex score of light and dark. A musical conversation where sometimes the instruments play in harmony, sometimes in discord and sometimes they pause to let silence speak.

The edges are where the magic happens. Where black meets white and neither surrenders completely. Where the eye has to work a bit to understand where one ends and the other begins.

I think about this in relation to life, to the way we’re constantly told to pick sides. To be one thing or another. To commit fully to a single path, a single answer, a single truth.

But what if the edges are more honest? What if the overlaps are where we actually live?

These monochrome abstract paintings suggest that possibility. They don’t hand you answers. They don’t resolve into neat categories. They insist on complexity, on nuance, on the refusal of life to stay purely one thing.

Where the Horizontal and Vertical Communicate

I’ve always preferred painting in vertical formats. There’s something about the upward reach that feels right to me. But in this series, as in my other recent work, I found myself drawn to horizontal brushstrokes.

Even when I painted those horizontal marks in a horizontal format, I’d often rotate the piece vertically before finishing. It’s a contrast that feels necessary. The horizontal suggests earthly horizons, grounded stability. The vertical reaching, aspiring, growing.

In these black and white abstract art pieces, that contrast adds another layer to the dialogue. The marks move one way. The format contains them another way. Nothing is settled. Everything is in dynamic tension.

Some strokes are heavy, urgent. Others barely touch the surface, delicate as breath. Together they build a rhythm like days stacking upon days. Like breath in and breath out. Like the steady pulse of continuing despite uncertainty.

From Solitude to Dialogue to Questions

This “Black and White” series sits between two other explorations I’ve undertaken recently.

After creating these black and white abstracts, where two colours argue and embrace, I went back to working with black alone in my “Only Black” series. Six paintings exploring darkness as elegance, power, and contemplative space. If you’re curious about what black can say when it speaks without interruption, I’ve written about that journey in “Listening to the Dark: My Black Abstract Art.”

And before both of these series, I created three paintings that ask a question I still can’t answer: “Where Does the Light Begin, and When It Ends.” The series, Black and White Paintings, explores thresholds and transitions, the uncertainty of boundaries between darkness and illumination. It’s where the conversation between black and white becomes a meditation on time, change, and the places where certainty dissolves.

Each series stands alone, but together they map a territory I’m still discovering. The solitude of black. The dialogue between black and white. The unanswerable questions about where one becomes the other.

There’s no right order to explore them. Follow your curiosity wherever it leads.

An Invitation to Notice: Black and White Abstracts

If you’re reading this, I wonder: where do you see black and white thinking in your own life?

Where are you being pushed to choose between absolutes when the truth might live somewhere in the overlap? Where are the edges in your experience, the places where things blur and refuse to stay purely one thing?

These abstract black and white paintings don’t solve that tension. They sit with it. They suggest that maybe the tension itself is where meaning lives.

Next time you’re facing an either/or choice, look for the third thing. The grey you didn’t plan for. The overlap where something new emerges. The edge where both sides meet and create something neither could be alone.

That’s where I found myself in this series. Not choosing between black and white, but discovering what they create together.

Share the Conversation

If these black and white abstracts spark something in you, I’d love to hear about it.

How do you navigate the space between absolutes?

Where do you find nuance in a world that often demands clear answers?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. Sometimes the most valuable insights emerge when we compare notes about the overlaps and edges in our own lives.

After all, art becomes truly alive when it meets another person’s gaze. And the conversation deepens when we share what we see.

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