SANTA FE, NM.- The first impression: field after field of color. The green of early spring. The yellow of sunlight on closed eyelids. The blue of water, the blue of sky. From a distance these 44 x 22 inch panes of color appear smooth, seamless in their expansion upward, from the deepest saturation of a color, slowly paling to white. This lifting of color seems to take a deep purple or a dense orange through every possible expression of a single hue. The change is so diffuse, so subtle, that without the use of anything but this gradually shifting color field, a feeling of immense depth is invoked. These panes of color feel endless, engulfing. As if the viewer could take a step forward into their space to be enveloped. These paintings are worlds to fall into.
Closer, there is texture. What appeared from a distance as perfectly smooth surface now becomes more complex. With closer study the weave of the canvas comes through. There are small wells of darker color mixed in with the light - what seemed seamless is really an interpenetration of dark and light tones. It becomes clear on closer inspection that the effect of diffuse color and light is not caused by a formulaic application of color shades. Instead it is the fine granular dispersal of color and light that creates the effect the way tiny molecules of water in a fog scatter light into soft, modulated shades.
The naming of the series, "Zero" is significant. For Watts, "zero" is not empty, but rather the ground from which all possibility arises. In the catalog of Series Zero Watts includes a quote by Zen Master D.T. Suzuki which offers insight into the nature of these paintings: In Buddhist Emptiness there is no time, no space, no becoming, no thing-ness; it is what makes all things possible; it is a zero full of possibilities, it is a void of inexhaustible contents.
This void, this zero of possibilities, is the world that one falls into in these paintings. Rather than the metaphor of the painting as window, here the metaphor of a mirror is more apt. The viewer will look into a deep blue the breathes upward into pale sky and think, remember, feel. Associations will come: the slow pink of a tulip bulb, the unfurling of a leaf. But the formlessness of these color-fields does not allow the viewer to hold on to these associations or memories for long. New thoughts arise and then fall away, arise and fall away, until finally the viewer stands in front of one of Joan Watt's paintings and there are no thoughts, no memories - there is only the experience of the moment, of being in and with the painting.
