Jill Spalding interviews painter Christopher Le Brun on the occasion of his exhibition at Friedman Benda, New York, on view through October 18, 2014.

Le Brun comments: "The potency of buried content can be as psychologically powerful as narrative; every brushstroke throws off an association… I let the work speak for itself. I don’t push the image because I want to leave you with a sense of immanence. From the drama of the image in my earlier work, I’ve switched to this other drama where the image is erased or obscured. [He points to Painting as Sunrise, a massive, burnished flame of a painting that held an image of a blue horse, until he revisited it months later and painted it out]. The horse was there and now is not there, which is its content – both its implication and its meaning. I no longer need to manifest it; it is present."