Following Closely Behind
About this artwork
Gena developed this composition with many thick layers of color. She applied paint to the canvas using both brush and palette knife to uniquely define the edges and create suggested form. Three figures travel closely behind each other as they walk along a path to embark on the next chapters of their lives, says Gena.Part of Gena's ongoing Illumination series, exploring mood and emotion through abstract portraits. She begins each piece with a dark background, adding fast, autonomous and broad marks. As the work progresses, she reveals and wipes away a history of her mark-making, selectively deciding what imagery to keep and what to discard. She continues the process until recognizable imagery and figures materialize. Her reference material for these portraits is mostly color schemes observed in nature or from memory.