Watercolors are Johannah Silva's magic liquids. She creates abstract impressions of micro- and macrocosm, transferring and transforming it into splendid worlds on paper. She uses the collage technique.

"In these drawings, I used circular and square forms which I repeat, stack, accumulate, organize and layer into grid-like and organic patterns. All forms refer to something in the material or non-material world, with the circular forms alluding alternately to simple orbs or globes of color or to cellular or planetary bodies."

Painting with watercolor: Technically a challenging experience for many artists. As the flow of paint is not quite predictable, the color takes over leadership. Painting, drawing becomes an amazing process.

"In my process, I am interested in the interaction of color washes and veils as they pool, collect, bleed, wrinkle or crease on the paper surface. Paying attention to both deliberate and spontaneous marks, my method/technique is a meditation on the flux and flow of everyday life. The movement and interaction of the washes also call attention to the tension between order and disorder, the closed/inert and the permeable, the static and the fluid, the mechanical and the organic."

Abstract Expressionists were fascinated by this experience. Pouring thinned-down paint directly onto bare canvas that absorbed the pigment into its fibers, Helen Frankenthaler created breathing landscapes of transparent planes of color washes. She made the fluidity of the paint, not the gesture of the painter, as in Pollock's drips, primary to the animation of her work. Another continent, years ago: On his journey to Tunis August Macke captured the Mediterranean light in layers of transparent veils in his watercolors. This special technique became popular in Expressionism celebrating the dissociation, the freedom of form and color. Delimitations, patterns and grids as attempts to restrain the flow of colors can also be found in art history. German painter Paul Klee who accompanied Macke on his trip, created a wonderful balance between colors and contours, a play full of tension and beauty. Luminosity of color and precise outlines: Johannah Silva's drawings show both facets.

But she developed a further method to delimitate colors fields: Instead of fixing outlines on the drawing itself, she cuts out circular forms out of painted paper integrating these into her drawing. Complex compositions of untamed color and disciplined forms. Exciting harmony.

JOHANNAH SILVA is a Chicago-based artist. Born in the Philippines and grown up in San Francisco, she has lived in Chicago for the past 10 years. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and currently teaches full-time at Wright College.

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