Rainbow Thicket Glare

2026

Rainbow Thicket Glare is my fourth solo exhibition at Nancy Toomey Fine Art, on view November 4 through December 19, 2026. The show brings together ten framed works of painted hand cut paper and four paintings on canvas.

I cut worlds that never existed. Each piece begins as a single sheet of paper and a blade. Tangles of ferns, vines, orbs, and drips emerge as I work without preconception. The cutting is slow, the decisions permanent. I start with swaths of drawing paper permeated with splashed-on watercolor, creating an abstract language to work against as I cut with my utility knife.

After the cutting is complete, bold color arrives in layers of hand-mixed acrylic, sprayed on. Spraying creates myriad gradients that behave as weather. Sun, clouds, and rainbows collide in a maelstrom of color, transforming the paper cutouts into self-contained alien ecosystems. Floating a quarter inch within shadowbox frames, each piece throws a nimbus of colorized drop shadow from its neon-painted backside, enveloping the cutout in an atmosphere of its own making.

The canvases carry a different weight. I spray over stretched canvas while I paint the cutouts. Each pass leaves a layer of color shaped by what the paper blocks and what slips by. Forms print themselves in negative, then dissolve under countless passes. Where the cut pieces are line and edge, these are pure color field. The spraying is fast, but the cutting that precedes it takes months. Each canvas gathers a season of work. I let it build, turn it, and stop it when the painted papercuts are complete. What survives is not just a byproduct of process, but an articulated world, a fully formed counterpart to the delineated cutouts.

The gallery is located inside San Francisco's Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota Street. Gallery hours Tuesday through Saturday, 12pm to 4pm, and by appointment.