Five Lines Short of an Answer
Five Lines Short of an Answer
Jefferey Cornett
Mixed Media / Contemporary Abstraction
The work presents a field of intense orange interrupted by heavy horizontal black marks and scattered fragments of white. At first glance, its vocabulary is almost elemental: orange, black, line, interruption. But the imperfections prevent it from becoming purely geometric.
The black bars aren't pristine. Their surfaces are rough and their edges slightly unstable. The orange carries scars, cracks and evidence of previous activity. The small white fragments behave almost like remnants of something erased, broken apart, or never completely communicated.
And that is where I think the painting becomes interesting.
The lines suggest order, rules, writing, measurement or attempts at explanation—yet they lead nowhere. They enter and leave the composition without resolving themselves. Meanwhile, the large orange field on the left remains remarkably open.
Five Lines Short of an Answer therefore becomes a painting about the distance between structure and understanding. We organize experience, categorize it, put it into sentences and draw lines around it—and sometimes the answer remains outside the frame.
Gallery description
Five Lines Short of an Answer reduces visual language to line, color and interruption. Heavy black horizontal marks impose order upon a weathered orange field while scattered white fragments disrupt its apparent certainty. Beneath the painting's graphic simplicity lies a more unsettled proposition: that structure does not necessarily produce resolution. What appears orderly from a distance becomes imperfect and deeply human upon closer inspection.
Value
This is one where scale matters enormously. I would not make this a small original. The simplicity needs physical presence.
If you produce the master at approximately 48 × 60 inches, I'd position the current gallery retail price around $7,500–$9,500.
At 60 × 72 inches, which I actually prefer for this composition, I'd consider $9,500–$12,500 a credible gallery asking range, assuming it is executed as a substantial mixed-media original with the tactile surface visible here.
For your pricing architecture, I would probably establish the 60 × 72 master at $10,500. That feels substantial without getting ahead of the present market development of the work.
I also think this belongs squarely in the Orange & Black Collection. But unlike some pieces that celebrate the colors, this one uses orange and black almost as a language. That makes it potentially one of the collection's stronger conceptual works.
