21.5" x 25.5"

acrylic paint and acrylic ink

I created this piece in 2019, a year after I went through some huge changes in my personal life – a move from Massachusetts, where I’d lived since 1997, to New Hampshire’s capital (Concord), the city in which, coincidentally, I’d been born 39 years before. During this period, I was exploring the wonders of using spray paint and adding water, pastel pieces, and eyeshadow to acrylic ink on various surfaces. My aim was to explore how they would affect the painting process and the shapes that mixing them would create. In this painting, the dominant shapes happened quickly and effortlessly. The figures seemed to direct my hand holding the spray paint to where they wanted the medium to be added. I let gravity and the air-drying process do the rest – hence the title Be Still.