Maria Britton

From conception to death, the surface of a bed is a place where one both experiences and escapes reality, a physical connection between dreaming and waking life. In the studio I seek out homespun innovations to play up the materiality of the patterned sheets on which I have been painting for the past 10 years. Recently I have started to incorporate smocking, a form of embroidery, into my paintings which enables me to manipulate the surface of a sheet into a bumpy, textured, and patterned surface. Using washes and streaks of acrylic, I work intuitively and impulsively with brushes, sponges, and squeegees. While painting, I am compelled to conceal and reveal the dated floral patterns that I find simultaneously comforting and repulsive. The end result is a mishmash of painting and crafty techniques which transform the predictable patterns into wrinkled innovations.