BEFORE THE SHARD 2020-2024 Integration

Between 2020 and 2024, elements developed separately across earlier periods began to converge within the same paintings. Material-driven processes remained present, but increasingly shared the canvas with forms deliberately constructed through brushwork. Mirrors, reflective surfaces, graphic black-and-white structures and sculptural volumes became part of the same visual vocabulary. During the pandemic, the palette expanded dramatically into blues, aquas and violets. These chromatic grounds were initially created as a deliberate response to a period already saturated with uncertainty and darkness: the artist wanted the work to carry luminosity, beauty and color instead. Many of these surfaces, however, remained unresolved for several years. Rather than forcing their completion, she left them untouched until her developing control of constructed brushwork provided a way forward. The white sculptural forms that later emerged became the element through which several of these earlier grounds were eventually completed in 2023 and 2024. Several developments within these years would become particularly significant. White sculptural forms became increasingly independent from their surroundings; black began to operate as active negative space rather than simply as color; and constructed forms acquired greater spatial autonomy. Queen of My Castle brought these investigations especially close to the figure-ground relationships that would be developed further in the subsequent work. This period therefore functions as one of integration: material experimentation, brushwork, reflection, graphic contrast, negative space and constructed form, previously explored through different stages of the practice, begin to coexist within a single visual system. By 2024, the conditions were in place for the next body of work.