The White Stripe
A white stripe soars over this intimate painting of red and black. It’s soaring like a White Stripes guitar solo performed by a rock band dressed in red and black. Steve called this painting Comet, and I get that. It also conveys soaring and speed and immediacy. But to me, this is The White Stripe. Steve Brophy is the Jack White of painting.
A lot of his power as an artist is expressed in his spontaneous brushwork. But this painting is different. It was not spontaneously painted, but spontaneously composed. Premeditated intuition.
In 1991 when Steve painted The White Stripe, his art was in transition. He had downshifted from the big gestural abstractions of the late 1980s. And he would soon embark on several large-scale series (floating rectangles, Braque-like birds, vertical bands) that would occupy him for the rest of his time left painting. Developing ideas, but not lingering too long on any one of them. These works unlocked a door and created a passageway from hot to cool, from big to intimate, before opening other doors and yielding to other passages.
In this transitional painting, elements from past decades of work emerge, but are subverted. The house sits not on the ground but floats. Its silhouetted form seems cut out of a giant red sequoia. Stylized leaves descend like a mammoth claw or bird, hovering over the house, creating an illusion of negative space. The bar of diagonal red and yellow stripes, pulsing like a barber shop pole, sends a jolt of electricity through the house and the surrounding, hermetic environment.
This painting wasn’t working at first. Steve repainted the elements multiple times, in different patterns, adding layers atop layers. Almost everyday, the painting changed beyond recognition. The thick swath of red almost obliterated all that lied beneath. It was building in interesting ways, and then…
A flash of inspiration. The white streak across the top. The comet. The Jack White guitar riff. The white stripe. I had to have it, and he gave it to me. No “permanent loan,” simply a gift of this perfect painting. Others may not notice it, but I do. Steve is winking at me. His spirit is what soars across this canvas.