Ha Long by James Edward Scherbarth

One dark, rounded mass against a scraped pale sky. Nothing else is required.

Ha Long is a painting by James Edward Scherbarth (1949-2021), in oil and cold wax medium on cradle board, signed and dated en verso. Cold wax thickens oil paint so that it can be built in layers and scraped back, a method that lets a painter's revisions show. A heavy grey form rises from the bottom edge, its surface scratched and worked. Around it lies a chalky ground of off-white, darkening toward one side. A dark floater frame holds the panel. Twenty-six and a half inches high and twenty and a half wide.

It takes up very little room and most of the attention.