David Koi
Paintings
After the Ceremony on a studio wall: four figures in white shirts and dark formalwear, their heads rendered as a red-pink mask, an orange ringed eye, a blue head and a violet head.

After the Ceremony

Portrait of Four: 1 of 4

Year
2026
Medium
Oil paint on gypsum powder, gesso, and modeling paste primed canvas
Dimensions
24 × 36 in

Stand close. Closer than you would with other people in the room.

A surface was built before any paint went on it. Gypsum for body, gesso and modeling paste for binder, worked over a pre-primed canvas.

Getting that mix right took a few tests. Too little binder and the material cracked as it dried and went brittle under a fingernail. One whole test panel fractured. Too much and the texture flattens out and you have lost the reason for doing it at all. The foundation of this painting is the ratio that survived.

There were other experiments. Different application methods, different drying times. A heat gun to force the drying. One patch I set on fire. It blistered and blackened. The fumes adding to a cumulative toxic exposure which I'm becoming all too familiar with these days.

Then the paints went on top, thick.

Now find the orange.

A burnt sienna layer went down first and everything after it was laid over the top, and where the upper paint cracked and pulled and left gaps, the orange comes back up through them. It is not painted on. It is what is left where the surface fissured. Opening between ridges. Caught in the spaces the brush could never reach.

Step back and the ridges resolve.

Four figures. White shirts, dark formalwear. A pink mask crossed by dark bands. An orange figure glowing with an internal light, with a section removed to show the brilliance within. A blue mask with no discernible facial features, dense with emotion. A violet figure turned to profile, its features cut in rather than painted on.

Two of them are dense and sit forward. Two are dissolving into what is behind them.

I gift After the Ceremony to my brother Ryan.

Upright close view of the red-pink head, crossed by two dark bands, against black crusted paint with orange in its cracks.
Upright close view of the orange concentric eye with a yellow centre, a pale wing shape cutting across it.
Upright close view of the blue head, orange showing through a network of cracks across its surface.
Upright close view of the violet head in profile, its features cut in with dark strokes and lit orange along the cracks.
Close view of lavender and white strokes laid in ridges beside deeper violet.
Close view where smooth white paint meets a black crusted field, orange burning through every fissure.
Close view of blue strokes over a red-orange underlayer that opens through the cracks.
Close view of pink paint dragged across dark green and black, with orange caught in the gaps.
Close view of thick pink and coral paint beside a glossy dark red stroke.
Close view of glossy black ridges lying over a burnt orange ground.
Close view of black crusted ridges with bright orange opening between them.
Close view where white and scarlet meet a ridge of near-black paint.
Square close view of an orange field broken up by dark glossy ridges of paint.
A tall slice of lavender and white ridges running beside deeper violet.