End of Day Triptych II

"Now in the reality I built for myself, what did I do? I took one tone. I gave the work order; I neutralized it by one tone. One of the reasons I originally started with black was to see the forms more clearly. Black seemed the strongest and clearest. But then somehow as I worked and worked and worked it pleased me. You see, one way about my thinking - I didn't want it to be sculpture and I didn't want it to be painting But - the thing is that it's something beyond that we make. My work has never been black to me to begin with. I never think of it that way. I don't make sculpture and it isn't black and it isn't wood or anything, because I wanted something else. I wanted an essence" (Louise Nevelson quoted in B.K. Rapaport, The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend, exh. cat., New York, 2007, p. 42).