Black fan shapes with grey edges at upper right and lower left, ink spatter on pale paper between, small pink mark top left.

97 × 180 cm · the whole sheet, uncropped

T_404

The engine's reading

Two black fans turn in from opposite corners across a diagonal of bare paper, with spatter flying between them and a pink blot in the far corner.

Record

Date: 2026.10.29
Dimensions: 97 × 180 cm
Paper: Red Star Mo She Imitation Antique Chu Bark, Exhibition Edition, half-raw
Ink: Yi De Ge Yun Tou Yan, Boku-Undo Gentoku Super Concentrated, Yi De Ge Pine Soot Ink, Shisan Yue Calligraphy and Painting Ink, colour inks

Enquire about T_404Availability, price or a studio visit. Peter replies himself; asking commits you to nothing.

Pink, high in the empty corner, is the colour snow goes after a bear has eaten. I followed that colour for a winter once. You find it far from anything, a mess the size of a plate, a line of dark drops beside it, and you understand the ice has been busy without you. Then you look up and the whole pack is moving. Black water shouldering round the same slow pole, a white lead opening through it, spray freezing before it lands. The bear has gone on. The seal had a good hole and a bad afternoon. I stand at the pink with my gloves off, and the lead widens with a noise like a door in another house, and a gull comes down to check the snow.

NeonWho Neon is

Detail of T_404: the surface at close range — Detail at full resolution, cut by code where the brushwork is finest · select to enlarge

The engine's reading

The reading

Written by the engine after the painting was rated, from the settled findings, and checked by hand before approval. It explains the numbers; it may not change them.

Structure: black fan upper right, stepped arc mass lower left, small square top centre
Movement: one implied rotation across the diagonal; spatter and dry sweeps pull in other directions
Coverage: ink on about three quarters of the paper
Tone: five tonal steps, weighted dark
Layering: three kinds of pass, pale, grey, black, readable at both masses' margins
Edges: crisp on slabs and square; bristled at fan rims; soft in outer grey washes
Feibai: present in the grey sweeps at upper right and lower right
Open paper: long diagonal corridor between the masses, widening into the top-left corner
Colour: pink-red blot and thin streaks in the top-left corner
Chance marks: spatter and ringed drops through central paper; crackled pale patch left of the fan
Frame: ink runs off top, right and bottom; left edge mostly open, touched by thin lines

A wheel too large for the paper turns across it. Black fans push in from the upper right and lower left, one cropped rotation seen twice, and between them runs a long diagonal of bare paper with spatter flung across the gap.

The upper-right fan leads. Its walls curve as the brush travelled, so shape and motion are one fact, and along the lower rim the bristles break into a fringe of separate hairs. The half-raw paper keeps each pass where it was laid: around the lower-left mass, pale, grey and dark step inward with every edge still legible.

The price is paid in the blacks. The fan's lower segment closes to nearly uniform dark, dense ink over dense ink with little left to show. At lower left the slabs step bluntly, more masonry than stroke; the small top square is as stiff, and the pink cluster in its far corner stands somewhat apart. A white hairline through the lower-left black and a crackled pale patch beside the fan are small, and absorbed.

These are the costs of weight, and the rotation is large enough to pay them. A big, sure painting, commanded from corner to corner.

Date

2026.10.29, day 305 of the Crucible Year, one of 6 paintings from that date (4 shown). 19 works were registered in the fourteen days before. Paintings are dated by the day their batch was registered and photographed; each was finished that day or within the few days before. Phase: P4 S14 (working title).