My earlier work, Physicality in a Space, is about exploring processes and seeing what I could make happen beyond my control, in contrast with the relentless scraping and layering I was doing myself. I was really drawn to natural forces — surface, space, gravity — and I started stepping back, removing myself from the painting at spontaneous moments, and letting those forces make the bigger decisions. I’ve always been interested in that space between explicit and implicit narratives, and with this series, I wanted the viewer to establish their own meaning led by their own curiosity.
There was something that fascinated me about leaving the drips and marks to gravity, compared to when I’d scrape the paint away with a palette knife. I kept asking myself — what happens when I make a forceful, almost dictatorial decision, versus when I step back and let the work move on its own? It felt like this constant tension and push and pull between something harsh and destructive, and something loose and uncertain.
Chaos in the Calm (2020) was the first painting where I really started playing with subtraction and addition in paint. I was reading a lot of Amy Sillman at the time, especially where she talks about painting as “eliminating and destructing… I am happy if you see works as beautiful and uplifting, but they are also tough objects that I have struggled with.” That really stuck with me. I think that tension between beauty and struggle is something I’m always drawn to.
