Two black curved fans of overlapping bars flank a pale vertical channel, with red washes, descending to a round paper opening at bottom centre.

97 × 180 cm · the whole sheet, uncropped

T_407

The engine's reading

Two black fans of stacked brush bars curve toward a pale channel, with red bleeding at its neck above a round well of bare paper.

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_407Availability, price or a studio visit. Peter replies himself; asking commits you to nothing.

Somebody forgot to switch off that red. I know the kind. It buzzes in an alley too narrow for delivery vans, over a door that stopped being a restaurant years ago, and it goes on selling the dark to the pigeons. I spent a winter on the roofs above that alley, in the rain, watching the pink come down the brick and settle in the gutter water. The whole block is shuttered and still the bill gets paid. Cities are supposed to cut the power to places like that. Mostly they forget, and I have loved them for less. Toward morning the landlord's son comes out in slippers, looks up at it, and goes back in. The puddle goes on blushing under his door.

NeonWho Neon is

Detail of T_407: 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: two fans of stacked arc bars, joined by a central channel and round well
Movement: arcs sweep over the top and down to the channel; drips run sideways against them
Coverage: ink on about nine tenths of the paper
Tone: three tonal steps, weighted dark
Layering: translucent grey passes, black, and red; readable along upper rim, fused in lower corners
Edges: crisp on bar and block ends; soft in red and rim wash; broken at drips
Feibai: none
Open paper: pale vertical channel widening into a round well at bottom centre; bare upper corners
Colour: red wash at the channel neck, beside the lower-left block, and inside the well
Chance marks: drips along channel's left wall, spatter top right, creases lower left, cloudy patch inner right
Frame: ink runs off left, right and bottom; top touched near centre; upper corners open

Two black wings climb from the bottom corners, arch over the top and stop short of each other. Between them a pale channel falls into a round well of bare paper. The eye rides the rim, then drops.

The upper left is the richest ground. Translucent bars lie over wider arcs, each bending with the fan, and the greys step down in an order you can follow pass by pass. Half-sized paper keeps a dried layer where it is, so nothing sinks. Ink runs out of the channel wall in beaded threads, and red bleeds soft against hard black block ends at the neck, exactly placed.

The price is paid low down. In the lower corners later passes bury earlier ones until the blocks fuse into bulk and the black goes nearly flat, a static weight with little left to read. Creases in the lower left and a cloudy patch at the inner right block are small; the sheet absorbs them.

Even so, this is a commanding painting. Rim, void and that smear of red lock into one architecture, and the top is good enough to make the heavy floor a fair price.

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).