I systematically remove what I’ve laid down, I build the paintings up slowly by applying thin layers of oil paint and then, using a soft cloth. It’s a process that retains the traces of every decision—the material has a memory. The weave of the linen becomes more pronounced, and traces of color are left behind, with each pass of the cloth.It’s why the images in the paintings appear to be both forming and disappearing.
Show at UCLA last May. She was also silhouetted in a painting at your M.F.A. The last time we met you were on your way to a Joni Mitchell concert.
Theodora Allen: I’ve loved her music for a long time, It actually wasn’t a concert that night—just an event honoring her. I was raised on it. But, yeah, the silhouetted figure from my thesis show—it’s from concert footage from the early ’70s. Mouth slightly open, eyes cast downward, Her face is in profile, with head tilted. but nothing about the look on her face is decisively Joni, There’s a suggestion of emotion. There are a few profiles like this that I keep returning to. But they share the same downcast eyes, they’re unrelated images. It’s the despondency of the gaze that sets the tone for the rest of the work. These profiles, like the plants and other objects that inhabit my paintings, are both representations and analogues. To ideas about transcendence there are references, there are references.
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