Ghost Rider

“My image has become one central, radial and open and shut shape in the plane.”

Stewart Hitch’s obituary in The New York Times stated “ . . . by 1968, Hitch was evolving an engaging style that merged modernist geometric abstraction with the saturated stained colors of Color Field painting and infused the hybrid with a light streetwise insouciance . . . His early paintings concentrated on four- or five-pronged star shapes that evoked hastily sketched corporate logos . . . .” Ghost Rider is amongst these.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, Hitch floated multiple geometric forms in layers on an atmospheric haze. A 1990 commentary on his artwork stated, “Hitch’s sly, abstract paintings invite us to think about the act of perception . . . What we see reminds us of how we see . . . effervescent spots of intense color generate vivid afterimages.” This is also true of Ghost Rider.