By Ellie Kane and Khutso Paynter
KHUTSO PAYNTER Created in 2018 Khutso Edgar’s “Glass Kiss to a Ghost from my Memory” is a sixteen by eighteen-inch oil painting on canvas. A dull lemon-yellow strip about two to three inches wide with a semi-transparent undulating line, flows across the top of the work. Below this strip, there is a thin two to three-inch opaque orange oil stick overlay, that highlights the texture of the gessoed canvas below. One feature of the work occupies the vast majority of the canvas; the ice-blue rings that circle, spiral and chain, creating a line that almost fully covers the dark purple background. One of the first works to display this technique, Edgar calls this “a breakthrough piece.” This distilling down of his process relates to the decluttering of both his studio and life, what he refers to as “relishing the space and enjoying the process of keeping space open.”