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Abstract Inquiry · 2023
Layers of Love in Color
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
Love as accumulation — the painting that holds affection as a layered thing, each layer a different risk.
Love (2023) is not a cliché — it’s a confrontation. This 48 x 48 inch mixed media painting from The Pulse of Life Collection captures love not as ideal, but as force: radiant, complicated, sometimes overwhelming, always transformative.
The painting glows with bold reds and deep maroons, layered with pale pinks and faded whites. Embedded beneath the surface are subtle marks — half-erased texts, shapes resembling hearts fractured or stitched, fingerprints smudged into color. Nothing here is perfect. Everything pulses.
I created Love not during romance, but in its aftermath — in that raw space where tenderness and pain blur. This isn’t about heartbreak. It’s about the totality of love: how it breaks us open, how it rearranges us. The beauty isn’t in being held. It’s in the holding.
This piece resonates with the work of Tracey Emin, whose emotional honesty leaves no room for polish. Like Emin, I believe love is worth painting because it cannot be captured — only felt, only released.
Love doesn’t flatter. It reveals. It reminds us that to love is to risk exposure — to open a space inside ourselves that may never fully close.
As part of The Pulse of Life Collection, this painting burns bright and low. It doesn’t ask for sentiment. It asks for presence. It asks if we’re willing to be changed.
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
- Natural light preferred — the resin catches it and the color shifts through the day
- Daylight
- Vibrant orange and deep madder intensify under western Arizona sun, and with low contrast the layers begin to merge. A north or east wall keeps each layer of red distinct.
Lives best in
Living room 5/5
Layers of Love in Color earns its 5 here because a living room is exactly where a five-foot canvas of graphite, orange, and deep madder can breathe and change as the day's light crosses it.
Hotel lobby 4/5
The scale commands a lobby wall and the vibrant orange reads instantly from a distance, though the work's tenderness asks for a pause most lobby traffic will not give it.
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
- Abstract Inquiry
- Palette
- Graphite Black · Vibrant Orange · Deep Madder
- Weight
- About 45 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 8–12 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Spur
- Texture2
- Form3
- Colour range3
- Palette5
- Contrast2.2
- Abstraction Quotient-2
