Gerhard Richter’s technique for abstract painting became particularly distinct from the 1980s onward. Museum sources describe his method as the successive application and removal of layers of paint. Paint is applied to the surface and then dragged across the wet surface with a large squeegee - a long, flexible-bladed tool that moves the paint mass, blends layers and scrapes paint away in places. A new layer may then be added and the process repeated.

For example, in Abstract Painting 780-1 from 1992, the National Gallery of Art describes Richter pulling a long squeegee across the canvas, smearing paint and exposing underlying layers. Changes in pressure or pauses in the movement leave bands of different width and density on the surface.

One of the defining characteristics of Richter’s technique is therefore the visibility of accumulated time.

The painting does not come into existence all at once. Its surface contains previous states: paint has occupied one place, then been moved to another, partly removed, covered by new paint and worked through again. Some earlier layers remain; some reappear; others almost disappear completely.

SFMOMA describes Richter’s process as a highly physical process taking place over an extended period, in which layers are added and removed and the squeegee moves the paint layers across the surface.

The National Galleries of Scotland likewise emphasizes that the final surface develops through numerous successive states and that the tracks of the squeegee remain visible in the finished work.

Richter’s painting therefore makes it possible to see the history of its own making.

The scale of Richter’s squeegee is technically important.

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art describes his method as first applying paint with a brush and then moving a long, flexible acrylic-bladed, homemade squeegee horizontally or vertically across the canvas.

The nature of this tool determines the scale of the movement.

A single pull can affect a large area of the painting. The paint mass moves, layers merge, some paint is removed and parts of the underlying layer become visible. Broad color fields, streaks, accumulations, thinned passages and ruptures emerge.

Richter’s technique is highly physical, but it is also deliberately open to chance. One of the aims of the method is to allow the painting to develop into something that was not completely predetermined by the artist.

His process can therefore be summarized as:

apply paint » move paint » remove paint » add another layer » move and remove again » assess » enter another state.

The painting emerges through successive states.

The starting point of my recent oil paintings is different.

The painting is completed within a single painting session. This does not mean that the process is quick or simple. On the contrary: the entire decision-making process is concentrated within that session - the placement of pigment, the direction of movement, pressure, changes in speed, changes of direction, gathering and dispersing.

The important difference is that I do not construct the painting through Richter’s repeated cycles of adding and removing layers.

I do not use a brush to direct the pigment.

Nor do I use conventional painting scrapers or tools designed for painting for this purpose.

I use small, flexible tools that were not originally designed for painting.

This detail is not, in itself, the essence of the technique, but it reveals something important: the tool does not come with a predetermined painterly gesture.

Instead, the tool becomes an instrument for directing the movement of pigment.

This distinction matters.

A brush is designed to apply paint.

A squeegee is designed to pull across a surface and move a mass of paint.

The flexible tools I use allow pigment to be directed on a different scale and with a different sensitivity: rather than simply dragging paint from one place to another, they influence its movement through very small changes.

In this technique, it is important to distinguish between paint and pigment.

Paint is the finished painting material.

Pigment is the carrier of visible color.

When I speak of directing pigment, the question is not simply where paint is placed on the canvas. The question is how the concentration and movement of pigment change across the surface.

Pigment can be:

• directed,
• slowed,
• accelerated,
• gathered,
• dispersed,
• redirected from one movement into another,
• allowed to accumulate briefly and then guided outward again.

These are not isolated decorative effects. Their repetition creates the final surface.

The fundamental structure of the painting therefore does not come from a single visible brushstroke.

It emerges from the cumulative effect of many small movements of pigment.

This is where the comparison with Richter becomes particularly revealing.

Richter’s squeegee operates on a large scale. The long flexible blade crosses a substantial area of the canvas and affects a large mass of paint at once. As a result, the trajectory of the tool can often be read in the finished surface: a vertical or horizontal pull, an accumulation of paint, a thinning of the layer, a rupture or the exposure of an underlying layer.

My paintings produce the opposite phenomenon.

The individual movement does not necessarily remain visible to the viewer.

What matters is its microscopic effect.

Pigment is directed through very small changes. The movement is repeated, altered and corrected. One movement affects the next, while the next visually transforms what came before.

The resulting surface is therefore not the trace of a single tool but a field of movement.

This is why a painting may appear from a distance as a unified field of color or light, while from close range it begins to break apart into a multitude of microstructures.

The viewer is no longer seeing only color.

The viewer begins to see how the pigment has moved.

This is perhaps the most precise way to formulate the difference between Richter’s technique and mine.

Richter manipulates the paint layer.

I direct the movement of pigment within the paint.

In Richter’s process, the central action is the physical displacement, blending and removal of the paint layer. An underlying layer may become visible; an upper layer may rupture or merge with the one beneath it.

In my process, the central action is the organization of pigment movement.

This is not simply dragging paint across the surface.

The movement of pigment can be directed so that the flow changes: it slows, accelerates, gathers, disperses and changes direction.

One of the interesting characteristics of my recent oil paintings is that certain transitions may resemble watercolor.

The material, however, is not watercolor.

It is oil paint.

The watercolor-like effect does not come from turning oil paint into watercolor, but from the distribution of pigment.

When pigment concentration changes gradually, color can move visually towards an almost transparent appearance. Stronger pigment concentration gathers in one area, while in another the presence of pigment becomes progressively more dispersed.

The transition therefore does not necessarily arise from the classical logic of “color A + color B = color C”.

Instead, it emerges through a change in pigment density across space.

This is what creates the unusual viewing experience.

This leads to another important difference.

In a Richter painting, moving closer can reveal squeegee marks, layers, accumulations of paint and evidence of removal. In other words, the physical history of the painting becomes visible.

In my paintings, something else becomes visible.

The unified color field begins to break apart.

Micro-transitions, differences in pigment density, extremely small directional movements and structures that cannot be fully perceived from a distance begin to emerge.

Viewing distance is therefore not merely an aesthetic consideration in my paintings.

It is part of the technical result.

The painting does not reveal itself all at once.

It changes according to how close the viewer stands to it.

Usually, a painting is meant to be viewed from a certain distance. Step back, and the image becomes whole. Impressionism made this especially evident: up close, the painting breaks into separate strokes and patches of color; step away, and they merge into an image. The instruction was simple: step back and look. My paintings ask for the opposite.

A single canvas can contain dozens, even hundreds, of distinct visual events and structures. They do not exist as separate paintings placed beside one another. They exist simultaneously within the same surface, becoming visible at different distances and through different acts of looking.

In this sense, the painting becomes almost like a gallery contained within a single canvas.

This is not an effect produced by adding more detail. It comes from the way the pigment itself is handled.

I call my process directing pigment rather than applying paint. Pigment is repeatedly directed through micro-movements - its flow is turned, slowed, accelerated, gathered and redistributed. The resulting surface is not simply textured. It contains trajectories, densities, interruptions and microscopic relationships that continue to reveal themselves as the viewer approaches.

This changes not only what can be seen, but how the painting must be seen.

The traditional question has often been: What is the right distance from which to view this painting?

My paintings do not have one right distance.

They require movement.

From far away, you encounter the whole. Closer, the surface begins to separate into other structures. Closer still, those structures become worlds of their own. The painting does not change when you move toward it. What changes is how much of the painting becomes visible.

I am not interested in abandoning the medium in search of something newer. I am interested in discovering what the old medium can still become.

The possibility lies not necessarily in inventing another style, another image or another surface effect, but in changing the fundamental relationship between pigment, surface and perception.

If painting can contain not one image but hundreds of independently discoverable visual experiences, then the canvas is no longer simply a window onto something.

It becomes a space to enter.

And perhaps this is the next question for oil painting:

Not how much more can we put onto the canvas - but how much more can the canvas reveal?