Johannah A. Silva

Steps
watercolor on paper
8 x 8 in.

My recent body of work involve abstract works on paper using water-based media. I use circular and square forms which I repeat, accumulate, stack, organize, and layer into grid-like and organic patterns. All forms refer to something in the material or non-material world, with the circular forms alluding alternately to simple orbs or globes of color or to cellular or planetary bodies.

In my process, I am interested in the interaction of the color washes and veils as they pool, collect, bleed, sit on, wrinkle or crease on the paper/surface. Paying attention to both deliberate and spontaneous marks, my method/technique is a meditation on the routine-ness, the flux, and flow of everyday life. The movement and interaction of the washes also call attention to the tension between order and disorder, the closed/inert and the permeable, the static and the fluid, the mechanical and the organic.

© Johannah A. Silva