Homage to Rothko

I was blown away by Mark Rothko's Seagram paintings when I first came upon them in their dedicated shrine in Tate Modern: the low lighting seemed to elicit an ecclesiastical hush from the stunned 'worshippers', giving a peculiar echo-ey, otherworldly soundscape to augment the viewing. From a distance, they seem like ill-defined rectangles of one colour on another, yet as one approaches, the work gradually manifests, the multiple paint layers peeping through near the borders to create a numinous, luminous uncertainty that somehow contains a hope which defeats the grim assertion of the monolithic rectangles themselves.

I've been after creating something suitable in Apophysis for some years now, but was never before satisfied. This builds on a technique introduced here, but utilising a cascade of diminishing cellsize to initially rip apart the structure at medium scale and reintegrate it towards the micro. Obviously, the border zone is here expanded to emphasise my own impressions. Hardly fractal, but 100% Apophysis nonetheless.

Full view essential.