The Stripe as Cognitive Infrastructure
This essay considers stripe painting not as a style, but as a structural device the eye is already trained to read, a way of organising attention through repetition, interval, and edge. It draws together studio practice, field observation, and ideas from visual perception and information theory to suggest why stripes recur across art, architecture, textiles, and systems of marking: they compress complex visual information into a legible sequence.
Written alongside The Vertical Line (2026), the text frames stripe painting as a disciplined working method, capable of carrying light, proportion, temperature, and rhythm without recourse to image or narrative.
Key themes:
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Stripe painting as method, not motif
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Perception and pattern: interval, repetition, and edge
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Stripes as compression: carrying information without representation
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Architecture, landscape, and light as sources of vertical structure
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Material practice: earth pigments, surface behaviour, provenance
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Constraint, variation, and calibration as studio method
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Why stripes recur across art, textiles, mapping, and signalling
Read on Academia.edu → https://www.academia.edu/145593738/The_Stripe_as_Cognitive_Infrastructure_Visual_Perception_Pattern_and_Contemporary_Painting
​Also available on Academia.edu under Harry MC.