Christina uses the paintings on paper as a way of challenging and relocating the physical familiarity she has with painting and drawing. The scale of these works is somewhere in between the two, allowing Christina to work both horizontally on the floor, or on a table (previously only possible with drawing), and vertically on the wall (previously only possible with painting). Shifting her physical relationship to the piece, gives way to new gestures and new compositional decisions.

These works are also much smaller than her smallest works on canvas, at times creating a clumsiness, or a more rudimentary approach toward the skills she’s honed in her painting. The defamiliarization encourages experimentation and rediscovery in her mark making and material decisions.

The paintings on paper also condense the duration of a painting. Often, as Christina’s works on canvas grow in complexity, so does the time it takes her to complete the work. The paintings on paper necessitate a much shorter timeline. They allow for a similar initial process, characterized by freedom, followed by Christina “painting herself into a corner,” and then developing compositional devices to overcome that hurdle. Moving through these steps over the course of a day, rather than weeks, or months, allows her to arrive at a feeling of catharsis, the satisfaction of a finished work, in a day’s work.