Something happened when you saw this. What was it?
Black & White · 2023
Expression of Self – Black and White Abstract Art
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
The self expressed in near-black — all the color removed until what remains is the form that expression takes when it has nowhere to hide.
Expression of Self (2023) is an introspective canvas — a visual attempt to answer a question that keeps evolving: Who am I when I paint? Part of the Out of Darkness Collection, this 60 x 60 inch mixed media painting captures the moment when expression overrides explanation and gesture becomes identity.
The surface is built from layered tones — dusty pinks, bold blacks, fleeting white, and flashes of raw ochre. Sharp brushstrokes interrupt softer textures, like thoughts forming mid-sentence. You can see indecision. You can see clarity. Most of all, you can see motion — a kind of searching written into the paint itself.
I made Expression of Self without a plan. I entered the studio that day with only a question, and left with a painting that didn’t answer it, but gave it form. The work isn’t a self-portrait. It’s a moment of contact between emotion and action.
This painting finds resonance with the raw honesty of Tracey Emin, especially her ability to make the personal universal through gesture. Like Emin, I believe in the vulnerability of making — that the marks we leave are evidence of our willingness to show up for ourselves.
Expression of Self is not tidy. It doesn’t perform identity. It reveals it — layer by layer, mistake by correction, color by shift. It’s selfhood in motion.
As part of the Out of Darkness Collection, this piece offers a mirror, not of face, but of feeling. A place where internal language finds form.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 8 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 9 ft or more
- Light
- Any lighting — monochrome palette is lighting-agnostic
- Daylight
- Bold black and fleeting white hold firm in any light. With texture this deep, a low side light turns the searching marks into relief; flat midday sun reduces them to pattern.
Lives best in
Hotel lobby 5/5
Expression of Self earns a 5 in a hotel lobby, where its monochrome drama and raw ochre striations stop a moving stranger cold and give an otherwise transient space a fixed, searching presence.
Office 5/5
A 5 in a private office: the compressed color range asks nothing of the eye yet the high texture rewards a long stare, making it ideal company for solitary work and focused thinking across a full day.
Details
- Size
- 5 × 5 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Finish
- Epoxy over acrylic. The resin lifts the color off the canvas and holds it forward, so the surface deepens as the light moves across the room.
- Year
- 2023
- Collection
- Black & White
- Palette
- Charcoal Gray · Dusty Pink · Bold Black · Fleeting White · Raw Ochre
- Weight
- About 45 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 6–8 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Corona
- Texture5
- Form4
- Colour range1
- Palette3.8
- Contrast5
- Abstraction Quotient4
