New World Paradigm by James Edward Scherbarth

A patch of acid yellow in a slate-blue world, dripping orange as if it just arrived.

New World Paradigm is a 2019 painting by James Edward Scherbarth, in oil and cold wax medium on cradle board. Abstract paintings like this are made to be lived with on a wall; layers built this way can be cut back with a blade, so earlier colors keep breaking through the later ones. Here, a yellow-green block sits at the center, netted with fine dark lines. Orange runs down and out from its left side. A lavender band crosses behind it, with a nearly black panel to the left and blue-grey fields beyond. Forty inches wide and 30 high.

The old paradigm appears to be taking it badly.