Making Space for Positive Things

I made this limited series at the close of 2021. It consists of 10 original mixed media paintings on 9x12 inch paper. All of the paintings play on the idea of negative space. For each piece, I created an original, abstract painting using watercolors and acrylics while leaving white, negative spaces left untouched. Some of the paintings feature raw, organic negative spaces, and some feature triangles, a nod to the heads of cuneiform wedges in the languages I study. After I’d let a painting sit as is for a while, I went back in and fill up those negative spaces with nice, fun, happy things — iridescent paint, glitter, silver leaf string, paper doilies, whimsical pen drawings, and so forth — thus transforming something “negative” into a positive.