Flight of Shadows: Twine Painting as Gesture and Tension

Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 6ft x 5ft
Creation Date: 2025
Collection: Organic Movement

Flight of Shadows (2024) is a 5x6ft oil on canvas, created using my signature twine painting method — a process where strands of twine become extensions of the body, translating movement into texture, form, and rhythm. This work belongs to an evolving dialogue within my practice where gesture becomes both mark and metaphor, a language of fluidity, friction, and surrender.

Set against a luminous, almost electric yellow ground, Flight of Shadows features sweeping arcs of deep black, layered and pulled through the viscous oil paint using twine as both brush and disruptor. The result is a dynamic choreography where the marks feel airborne, yet tethered — like shadows of birds, waves, or ancient calligraphic gestures frozen mid-motion.

In its process and execution, this painting finds a resonance with the works of Lorna Simpson, particularly her explorations of mark-making as both personal and political language. Like Simpson, I engage with the materiality of the mark — not as illustration, but as residue of action, tension, and gesture. Flight of Shadows is less about representation and more about the trace of motion, the choreography of the unseen hand.

This painting is a meditation on dualities — light and shadow, control and chaos, presence and absence. The twine becomes an agent of unpredictability, allowing the surface to capture the fleeting, the momentary, the atmospheric. The vastness of the yellow field amplifies the floating tension of the black forms, creating an immersive space of both confrontation and contemplation.