Plato believed art must represent an Idea — something perfect, complete, existing beyond the material world.

The painting is always a shadow of a shadow.

Malevich said: the painting is the Idea. The Black Square does not represent transcendence. It is

transcendence, made visible, made material, made flat.

I live somewhere between these two. I began my path believing in Plato, and moved — slowly, over decades —

toward Malevich. But I have not fully arrived.