About the Artist
Behind the Art: Background & Process
Hi, I'm Angie!
I’m a New York abstract artist who paints without a plan. Here’s how that works, where it came from, and why I think it’s worth trying. I hope you find a few ideas to inspire your own creative process.
My former art studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn before relocating to Bushwick, and then eventually to Ridgewood, Queens in 2025.
Inspiration
My work explores the interplay between the subconscious and conscious mind, translating subliminal influences into visual art.
Music, emotion, energy, color, and letterforms shape unplanned compositions, often in ways I don’t recognize until the painting starts to take shape or is finished.
Through intuitive mark-making, I strive to connect the heart and mind, allowing colors, gestures, and forms to engage and evolve into a tangible visual dialogue.
Art Process
Each painting is a chain reaction among marks, colors, and forms.
Quick decisions about where a stroke goes are based on where the last one landed, creating relationships I couldn’t have planned.
I move between adding marks and refining the connections between them until it feels finished.
Inevitably, weird-looking characters, figures, and recognizable scenes often emerge and take on their own identity.
I think of it as an encrypted conversation the marks and colors have among themselves, and I’ve provided a habitat for them.
Some become experimental studies, and some join the gallery.
For larger paintings, I work on a flat podium affixed to a furniture dolly so that I can spin it and move around while I paint.
Abstract watercolor painting at Times Square, NYC.
Abstract watercolor painting made on an airplane from Florida to New York.
For small paintings, I use my little "travel art studio" anywhere from the New York subway to parks, airplanes, cafes, or anywhere that I have a moment to make marks.
I normally finish each painting in one session, usually 20 minutes to 3 hours, while the flow is still going. That keeps me from revisiting it later and overthinking every stroke (or they’d never be finished) and lets me move on to the next piece. I work in pen and ink, watercolor, and acrylic, mostly on watercolor paper or canvas.
Art Style Evolution
My abstract improvisation style grew out of my love of calligraphy and an early career of hand-painting lettering and illustrations for greeting cards, which led to work as a graphic designer and videographer.
I lean on my instincts of hand-crafted letterforms, a sense of design composition, and a video editor’s feel for pacing and movement, where it all comes together in unexpected ways.
I find it supremely fun, relaxing, and surprisingly challenging to fill up a page with calligraphic marks, while not actually spell anything out.
Artwork Titles
I give my artworks a title after they're finished, when I can observe what happened and how they look and feel to me.
If I can't come up with a title or the title I have doesn't feel quite right, I post it on social media and get amazing ideas from the community!
I love for viewers to express what they see and feel in the paintings. Sometimes it's very similar to what I see, and sometimes it's entirely different.
Stories in Paintings
This was an impromptu painting that was a little different from my patterns that are more dense. I had no idea what to name it and put it away in a drawer. Months later I rediscovered it when I was preparing for an art show.
At that point I saw the whole story. I’ve always loved contemplating the vastness of the universe, our solar system, and outer space since I was a little kid. My imagination kicked in!
What I see is a rocket coming all the way from Earth and landing on Mars.
An alien creature and their caterpillar pet are assisting, tethering the rocket because it’s starting to lean slightly to the left. They're also providing complimentary wi-fi access.
An astronaut is emerging from the rocket, clearly happy to be there with the long flight completed.
Two circles are melded into the sky background, so I looked up Mars' moons…and it has two: Phobos and Deimos. Perfect, that totally tracks.
On the bottom right, where I randomly painted a light green “X” and an arrow pointing to it… I’ve decided that it is their destination. It’s a map to the space traveler's restaurant and billiards pub.
The alien and astronaut go there to debrief, rack a few games, talk about art and philosophy, and then go to their dwellings for the night.
The end.
Early Black & White Studies
In the greeting card industry, I lettered phrases like “Happy Birthday” and “Thank You” or illustrations of specific objects over and over, in different styles to match the illustration, sentiment, and the audience.
To counteract that, I began making abstract patterns and deliberately avoided any readable letters. It pushed me toward new kinds of marks and compositions instead of automatically clicking into letterforms or drawing something specific.
Sometimes, past observations show up that I didn't plan.
This one was inadvertently inspired by Dale Chihuly.
Samples of Commercial Lettering Work
Earlier Color Work
When I started these paintings, I’d sketch a composition in pencil, then go back in with black marks and watercolor, just as I did for greeting cards. But it wrecked the fun and made me ruminate over every decision.
To stop treating my personal art as an “assignment,” I stopped planning and just dove in with a different mindset.
It didn’t matter how it came out or if anyone liked it…what mattered was that it happened.
The prompts disrupted my logical thinking and let the paintings come from places that analytical thinking couldn’t reach. My style evolved into personal expressions that resemble languages, fanciful creatures, and odd geometrics.
Then I started implementing and inventing weird prompts and and gave myself constraints that forced new ways of making marks and combining them with color and white space.
Subconscious Abstract Workshop
The prompts I’ve developed over the past 20+ years became the basis of my workshop, Subconscious Abstraction.
Using simple prompts and constraints, beginners and experienced artists practice this switch-thinking method, a way of making art that skips analytical thinking so the marks come from instinct and emotion.
Angie's Subconscious Abstraction workshop uses creative-flow prompts that disrupt habitual ways of thinking about art to explore freely and discover unexpected directions in your work.
Background
I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, in a family where art and music were part of everyday life. My mom taught me calligraphy when I was a teenager, and I immediately fell in love with it.
Before long I was lettering the band awards certificates, which was a major confidence booster that got me out of my shell a tiny bit.
That early passion for calligraphy led me to work with major greeting card companies like Hallmark Cards and American Greetings.
Looking back, I realize that those moments of practicing calligraphy with Mom gave me more than a skill. It gave us precious time together, bonding over art. It planted the seeds of the visual language I continue to explore.
Mom
Dad, Mom
Marlene, Carrie, Angie, Melody, Glen
The purple family outfits were hand-made by our amazingly talented Aunt Judy, a saxophonist who inspired me to play tenor sax in band.
Creative Journey
Eventually I branched out into commercial design and co-founded a boutique design agency in Colorado.
(My dog Jordy loved riding around Garden of the Gods park on the scooter with me.)
Our team's exceptional work earned numerous awards and a reputation as the most creative design agency in the area.
I expanded into professional photography and video production while continuing to develop my art style and taught occasional weekend workshops.
After a successful run, we sold the agency to our employees, and I joined our biggest client as their full-time art director and multimedia designer.
New York
I moved to New York in 2012, trading mountains and mile-high dry sunlight for crowded subways, all-day rain, and skyscrapers. I fell in love with the buzzing creative frequencies and millions of inspiring people!
My commercial design work moved from the ProAV industry to joining a law firm, and then a PR agency, where I worked with a wide variety of clients and industries.
Currently I work as a freelancer for agencies, corporations, and organizations, specializing in presentation design, branding, and video production.
My creative practice in abstract art continues to evolve, and I recently launched @CreativeTilt, an art newsletter and YouTube channel where I share inspirations, art processes, tutorials, and creative explorations.
My path isn't exactly a straight line, but every chapter is always rooted in visual communications, bringing new experiences and ways of seeing.
Time-lapse video of my brush lettering practice with a famous Picasso quote that sums it up perfectly and is a sentiment echoed by many artists.
ART WASHES AWAY
FROM THE SOUL
THE DUST OF
EVERYDAY LIFE."
- PABLO PICASSO
