The potency of interference pigments tends to intensify when they are applied thinly over dark grounds. The veil in As Days Get Dark, for example, is noticeably stronger outside the margins of the central image, where it overlays the black cherry skin of the painted frame. Likewise, the crisp green rectangle in Wax and Wane is most legible at the top left of the work, where it is offset over the border. In this case, the interference layer disrupts our understanding of how the picture has been made, giving the impression that a printing process has been used. No such process is at play. As with all Coleman’s works, the reference image has been produced by camera but translated into paint strictly by hand.
