Deep Abstraction: Layers of Depth and Breathing Space

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas
Size: 5ft x 4ft
Creation Date: 2020
Collection: Ephemeral Atmosphere

Deep Abstraction (2020) is part of my Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, created during a time when I was searching for spaces within spaces — those quiet, breathing interiors that exist beneath the noise. This 60 x 48 inch acrylic on canvas explores depth not as physical perspective, but as an emotional excavation.

The surface is layered with subtle washes of blues, grays, and muted whites, creating an atmosphere that invites slowness. Forms hover just beneath the surface, emerging and dissolving with each gaze, suggesting a shifting relationship between what is seen and what is felt.

In creating Deep Abstraction, I found myself in conversation with Vija Celmins, whose meticulous, meditative drawings of oceans and night skies offer portals into vast, unknowable spaces. Like Celmins, I am interested in how surface becomes a site of contemplation, how repetition and restraint create depth without the need for overt gesture.

Yet Deep Abstraction moves toward the atmospheric rather than the literal — it is less about depicting a space and more about offering one. It invites the viewer to exhale, to linger in the ambiguity, to let the painting become a place where boundaries soften and time slows.

As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this work asks: What spaces within ourselves do we avoid? And what might we find if we stay with them a little longer?