Our partners at Art Practical are celebrating their sixth annual Shotgun! issue, so today we bring you Maria Porges’ review of Cynthia Ona Innis: Shift at Traywick Contemporary in Berkeley, California. This article was originally published on September 25, 2014.

Cynthia Ona Innis.
 Shift, 2014; acrylic and satin on canvas; 
45 x 50 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Traywick Contemporary.

Rather than being representations of place, Cynthia Ona Innis’ paintings are evocations of the experience of landscape. Innis favors locations where change is visible and constant—like Iceland, where she visited a year ago; the fault-ridden ground of the Bay Area; or the dramatic scenery of the Eastern Sierras: Mono Lake, desert playa, and high mountain peaks.

In the paintings and works on paper included in her exhibition Shift at Traywick Contemporary, cascades of fluid, transparent color invoke geysers and waterfalls. They also suggest the effects of light, ranging from dense fog to blinding reflections on water, or the striation of sandstone in shades of warm tan and brown. But these biomorphic blots and splashes are rarely left to simply pour down the surface of Innis’ paintings. A variety of fabrics that include satin, silk, and velvet are first stained and then cut into strips. Innis manipulates them horizontally, arranging them on wood panels, canvas, or paper. A final layer of varnish fixes the collaged materials in place, though their raised edges remain visible.

Read the full article here.