Valerie Brennan interviews painter Stephen Maine whose exhibition Halftone Paintings is on view at 490 Atlantic Gallery, Brooklyn through May 10, 2014.

Maine comments: "I deliberate for a long time over color choices. To clarify my position regarding color, I have in recent years stripped it way back to a binary palette; the newest work is only slightly more diversified chromatically. In any case my color is most interesting when I arrive at it slowly… I do not intentionally prolong the process out of some idea about performativity, or to enact a ritual. In fact I loathe ritual. The pictorial result is primary. But each painting presents the evidence of a series of decisions that come about in its proximity and coinciding, at certain crucial moments, with its surface. The monoprint mark is the residue of a clumsy, imprecise operation. That imprint is all that remains of a protracted and complex action otherwise lost to time. It is futile to try to foresee this outcome. To the extent that I suspend control over the process, the result is surprising. I insist on being surprised."