INSPIRATION - Josef Albers

In my latest series of charred works, each measuring 50 x 50cm, sits in a distant dialogue with the legacy of Josef Albers and his seminal Homage to the Square paintings. While the works are not directly inspired by Albers, his practice has offered a kind of permission — a reassurance that repetition, subtle variation, and sustained focus within a single format can become an expansive and deeply meaningful artistic language.

Albers began the Homage to the Square series in 1950, at the age of sixty-two, and continued working on it relentlessly until his death in 1976. Over those twenty-six years he produced more than two thousand paintings and prints, all based around nested squares of carefully calibrated colour. Through this seemingly simple structure, Albers explored what he described as the “interaction of colour” — how colours shift, vibrate, recede, or intensify depending on their surrounding tones. The square became less a compositional device and more a framework for endless experimentation: a disciplined structure through which infinite variation could emerge. Each work appeared familiar, yet no two were ever truly the same.

There is something deeply resonant in that approach for this charred series. The consistency of scale and format creates a visual rhythm, while each individual work remains entirely unique through the geology, material, and location embedded within it. Like Albers, the repetition is not about sameness, but about allowing subtle differences to reveal themselves over time.

The decision to work at 50 x 50cm was practical, as most of these works are created in situ the scale allows each panel to be carried easily under one arm while walking to remote locations. The size feels human, portable, and connected to the act of collecting and making within the landscape itself. Interestingly, many of Albers’ Homage to the Square works occupied a similar scale, often ranging between approximately 43cm and 63cm.

Where Albers’ series became a lifelong homage to colour and perception, these charred works become a homage to geology — an ongoing document of the material and narrative character of the UK geological forms. Created using charred stones gathered from specific locations, each work carries the physical trace of place, acting almost as a geological portrait. Together, the series forms a growing archive of landscape and historical forms.

All charred works shown here are currently available. If something has caught your eye or you’d like to know more about a specific piece — size, framing, pricing — I’m always glad to hear from collectors directly.

Get in touch at info@lucyauge.co.uk

You can view my available artwork here. And find me on IG here