As a painter, abstraction is a language to tell a story obliquely and metaphorically, to offer a narrative hiding in plain sight. I’m interested in how individual histories become embodied experiences as a consequence of family dynamics, cultural ancestries, and gender. To explore these ideas, I create animated abstract interrelationships to suggest situations and internalized states that are not easily categorized. In my paintings, I imagine situations that are both old and new where I can create beauty and humor to live with my recognition of the intractable layering of history.

Art history informs my language of abstraction and illusion: the mix of flatness and perspective in early Renaissance frescoes; the transmutations of Surrealism; and the colorful animation of psychedelia and Pop. Graphic elements from material culture also shape how I construct an abstract vocabulary. For example, within traditions of Western image-making, stripes can indicate a rejected or problematic status, serving as code for outcasts from society. Incongruities—between geometry and the naturalism of trompe l’oeil, and between fictional gravity and factual flatness—refer to the complexity of internalized sensations and generational repercussions.

DEBORAH ZLOTSKY

DEBORAH ZLOTSKY