Spilt Cream

Medium: Mixed Media on Canvas
Size: 7ft x 7ft
Creation Date: 2023
Collection: Ephemeral Atmosphere

Spilt Cream (2023) is an ode to accident — a painting that captures the poetry of mess, the beauty of what happens when control gives way to flow. This 84 x 84 inch acrylic and mixed media piece from the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection embraces looseness, softness, and the visual warmth of the unplanned.

The canvas is awash in warm whites, ivory, and subtle hints of honey gold and blush. A central spill — thick and gestural — pours across the surface like milk across stone. The texture is rich and tactile, with brushstrokes and drips frozen mid-motion. Around the edges, faint marks suggest the remains of intention: wiped lines, hesitant curves, half-drawn forms.

I painted Spilt Cream during a period when precision no longer felt useful. I wanted to explore imperfection as presence — to see how something accidental could feel more honest than anything carefully designed. This work is a celebration of softness and surrender.

It resonates with the intuitive materiality of Helen Frankenthaler, particularly her soak-stain paintings, where pigment and surface merge. Like Frankenthaler, I’m interested in how painting can be both act and aftermath.

Spilt Cream doesn’t clean up after itself. It rests in the moment after the spill — where chaos becomes calm, and mess becomes form.

As part of the Ephemeral Atmosphere Collection, this piece is about release. Not mistake, but moment. Not damage, but flow.