Original Painting: STONE WORK 2 by James Edward Scherbarth

Three small panes hide in a black framework, with a wide pale wall leaning in beside them.

This original painting, Stone Work 2, is by James Edward Scherbarth (1949-2021), in oil and cold wax on cradle board, signed en verso. Abstract painters have often reduced architecture to its bones, and the grid of a window is among the oldest shorthand for it. Thick black bands form a ladder of rectangles at left, three small panes in a row above a broader block. To the right, a gray-lavender field fills more than half the panel, its edge bending in a long curve. The gray is dense with tiny vertical scratches. It is 12 inches wide and 12 high.

A building, distilled to its most essential argument.