untitled (48 potentialscapes C)

untitled (48 potentialscapes C)
2026_08_21
6” x 8” (15.24 x 20.32)cm
artist walnut ink on 140 lb. / 300 gsm cold press watercolor paper
Matt Niebuhr - West Branch Studio
www.mattniebuhr.com

original work signed and dated verso

About:

Likeness Allows Differences to Become Visible: 48 Potentialscapes
Conceptual proposition / empirical fact / imaginative possibility

These drawings begin with repeated geometric fields that establish a basis for comparison. Each form resembles the one beside it, yet no two are identical. Their individual qualities become visible at the boundaries between them: dark and light, saturated and transparent, contained and dispersed, distinct and nearly dissolved.

Homemade walnut ink gives this comparison a physical presence. It pools, bleeds, stains, separates, settles and dries according to conditions that can be guided but never completely controlled. Turmeric enters some works as an additional stain, shifting the color and intensity of the field. Within the proposed order of the grid, these material events allow each form to acquire its own particular image.

The count is intentionally factual. Forty-eight rectangles simply means that forty-eight rectangles are present. Like the geometry, the number provides something measurable and knowable without assigning symbolic meaning. It establishes the condition in which variation can occur.

The forms are like leaves on the same tree: recognizably related, yet individually distinct. Each rectangle becomes a potentialscape, a small world formed through the exchange between structure and occurrence, repetition and change, likeness and difference.

Please feel free to email me niebuhr.matt[at]gmail.com if you find other work of mine not available here that you may be interested in as well as if interested in collecting multiple pieces for special shipping and pricing.

Thank-you!