How the work is made: my studio, floor to roof

I paint on the floor. Canvases get stretched, laid flat on the floor of the painting room, and worked from above: acrylic poured straight from the bottle or can, flung from a stick, dragged with a board for the striped pieces, drawn on with paint markers for the line work, and left to run. Anything over 5ft goes up to the roof where there's room to walk round it. Not much is brushed in the usual sense; the mark is made by the paint's own weight and speed.

Three ways of working

Poured and flung. The black-on-white works — No. 034, No. 038, Never Enough, No. 001, Love B — are made in long whole-arm passes with the paint leaving the stick in an arc, then finer spatter as it thins. Each loop is one gesture; there's no going back over a line.

Dragged. The striped works — No. 028, Wallpaper, No. 036, No. 037, No. 029, Breaking Out — start with bands of colour laid down wet and then pulled across with a straight edge so they blur into each other. The direction of the drag is the drawing.

Layered. The whites and the blues — No. 014, No. 012, No. 017 — are built in thin skins over days, each allowed to dry, so the earlier colour shows through the later one. These take the longest and are priced accordingly. Sometimes the layer underneath is a whole earlier painting — No. 003 has one — and I'd rather paint over a piece that isn't working than store it.

Materials, and how long they last

Heavy cotton canvas on 1.5-inch stretchers, primed. Golden and Liquitex acrylics, Posca markers for line work, house paint for big flat grounds. Everything is water-based and stable. On lightfastness I lean on the manufacturer rather than my own word: Golden tests its colours to ASTM D4303, the standard for artists' pigments — samples under glass in real sun and in a xenon-arc chamber — and publishes the ratings; a colour that shifts less than a Delta E of 4 in that test is rated I, "excellent," and 4 to 8 is II, "good." Golden's Sarah Sands is careful to say the accelerated results aren't predictions of a specific number of years, only a way of betting on the colours that hold up best, and that's the spirit I use them in. The Canadian Conservation Institute's guidance for paintings is the other reference: keep it out of direct sun, away from heat and drafts, and — specific to acrylic — out of the cold, since the paint film goes brittle below roughly 5 to 10°C. Dust with a soft, dry cloth and that's the whole maintenance schedule.

Two rooms at the back of a warehouse

The studio is two rooms at the back of a warehouse in Queens. The first is the painting room: canvases go down on the floor, the paint goes on, and the floor is itself a record of every pour — the table in the corner hasn't been clean since 2024. The second is where work dries and hangs: finished canvases lean and hang there while the paint cures, which for a thick pour can take a week, and it doubles as the place to see a piece upright on a wall before it leaves. Big canvases go up to the roof to be finished in daylight and to dry flat. The On the wall page has clips of all of it: the walk in through the warehouse, the roof, the floor, the paint still wet.

Titles and numbers

Some works get a title when they're finished; a lot stay Untitled and go by number. Both are catalogued the same way — dimensions, year, medium, number on the back — and both come with a signed certificate.

FAQ

Is the work acrylic or oil?

Acrylic, on canvas, throughout — plus acrylic paint markers on a few of the line pieces.

How long does a painting take?

A poured work can be done in a day and take a week to cure. A layered work takes weeks.

Can I visit the studio?

Yes, by appointment, in Queens, New York. Email charles.s.black@gmail.com.

Do you take commissions?

Yes: a size, a palette and a room, and a scheduled delivery date. Ask through the contact page.

Sources

• Lightfastness Testing at Golden Artist Colors — Sarah Sands, Golden Artist Colors, Just Paint (2017, updated 2021)
• Safe Handling and Transportation of Acrylic Paintings — Golden Artist Colors, Just Paint (2003, updated 2021)
• Environmental and Display Guidelines for Paintings — CCI Notes 10/4 — Canadian Conservation Institute, Government of Canada

About the author. Charles Black is a self-taught painter working in acrylic on canvas from a two-room studio at the back of a warehouse in Queens, New York, and the founder of ABB Collective. He has been posting the work as @abstractbyblack since 2022 and has placed paintings in bars, offices and private homes around New York. Questions about anything here: charles.s.black@gmail.com.