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Ephemeral Atmosphere · 2022
Quilt In Red
Available · in the studio, Phoenix
Red as warmth held in pattern — the quilt as the domestic form of fire, comfort made from the most consuming color.
Quilt in Red (2022) is a tapestry of emotion stitched not with thread, but with gesture. Part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this 75 x 95 inch mixed media canvas evokes memory, warmth, and rupture through a grid that flickers rather than confines.
The work draws on the visual language of quilts — repetition, variation, structure — but filters it through abstraction. Reds dominate: deep garnets, burning crimsons, and soft rose tones that bleed into muted greys and textured blacks. The palette feels both ancestral and contemporary, like tradition recollected through mood.
I’ve always been drawn to quilts as metaphors: for care, for heritage, for the invisible labor of preservation. But Quilt in Red is not about nostalgia. It’s about what happens when the pattern frays — when the pieces no longer fit neatly together, and yet still hold.
This work finds resonance with Rosie Lee Tompkins, whose improvisational quilting speaks of deep internal worlds through visual rhythm. Like Tompkins, I see each mark as a kind of stitching — not decorative, but connective.
The grid in this painting isn’t precise. It wavers. It moves with the weight of feeling. And within each section is a different climate: a storm, a breath, a silence.
As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, Quilt in Red explores the fragility of cohesion — how we hold ourselves together, even when unraveling.
Where to see it. In person at RituStudio, Phoenix, by appointment. Represented by Jarrow & Goodman, Los Angeles.
The space it needs
- Wall
- At least 10 ft wide
- Ceiling
- 10 ft or more
- Light
- Natural light transforms this work — morning and evening light read differently
- Daylight
- Burnt umber and earth reds deepen and warm under west sun, and at low contrast the quilt's sections can merge in glare. A north or east wall with side light keeps each patch distinct.
Lives best in
Living room 5/5
Quilt In Red earns its full score here because a living room is the one space that asks you to stay long enough to notice how its burnt umber fields fray at their seams yet refuse to come apart, rewarding exactly the kind of unhurried looking that daily life in this room allows.
Bedroom 4/5
The tenderness in those brown and umber sections, each one a different temperature held together by invisible effort, makes this a painting you want to wake up to slowly, though the scale demands a wall of at least ten feet and a room that can breathe around it.
Details
- Size
- 8 × 6 ft (W × H)
- Medium
- Acrylic on canvas
- Year
- 2022
- Collection
- Ephemeral Atmosphere
- Palette
- Burnt Umber · Brown · Earth Tone
- Weight
- About 65 lb
- Ready
- In the studio; delivery 6–10 weeks
Its ArtGram
ArtGram.Sprig
- Texture4
- Form2
- Colour range2
- Palette4.1
- Contrast1.9
- Abstraction Quotient5
