The Arches-Reflections on Serra series is an interpretation of Richard Serra’s monumental sculptures I first saw at MoMA in 2007 and then again at the Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea in 2011. Their effect on me has been largely visceral and I’ve spent endless days, weeks and months working on my own pictorial vocabulary, sufficient enough to identify the emotional responses Serra’s Torqued Spheres and Ellipses elicited deep within me.

Richard Serra at Gagosian Gallery
Serra at Gagosian Gallery in 2011

I am mesmerized by the elegance and unpredictability of his curvature, by the apparent weightlessness of his multi-ton installations, by the fluidity with which the walls of his sculptures manage to expand and collapse the amount of space the viewer occupies as he moves through them. I am left breathless by the way he manipulates the positive and negative spaces and draws the viewer to, obsessively, trace every turn, every stain, every uneven patch of steel and although watercolor may not be the obvious choice to reflect steel, somehow it felt like a perfect medium. Unfamiliar with its characteristics, watercolors offered me a chance to really work through my emotions and reactions to Serra’s work. As you wander through the series, imagine yourself walking through one of Serra’s labyrinths.

Positive becomes negative and negative turns positive…