experiment and play

It's no wonder I've been struggling of late, not simply due to lack of time ( though this is a serious issue ), but also because I begin to realise that I've been missing something in the work.

If I could reduce all images and words to some form of flatness/sameness, then would 'world' take over, using the images and words as some form of platform on which to perform? This is not to say that I don't value inconsistency and waywardness, and all those unruly actions, but I guess I don't want to fetishise these behaviours at the expense of allowing room for something else to creep in, something akin to ontological breaks, or bursts, for example. Oddly, for work that I have always maintained was like a form of inversion, I may have got things inside out and back to front.

Lately then I've taken to writing simple statements on paper and seeing how they 'hold up' and something about this process is starting to become interesting. I've started to put some black grounds down on canvas again ( after 20 years ) on which I propose to write a statement ( or in some cases a drawing ) in white.  There's  not a great deal of variation in scale, material, colour, but for some reason I feel that they are  starting to allow something to take place without all the hullabaloo of previous work.

I wonder if I've been confusing  'experiment' with 'play'?