Easton Miller interviews painter Christine Frerichs on the occasion of her exhibition The Conversation at gallery|km, Santa Monica, CA, on view through July 27, 2013.

Frerichs comments: "With this body of work, I wanted to find a way to create abstracted portraits that… describe at once the physical and emotional aspects of oneself through the use of symbolic color, form, and composition. Instead of the body acting as the exterior shell for one's interior thoughts and feelings, I wanted to try flipping it inside out. So the abstracted body form in these paintings is the base layer and superimposed on that textured foundation is imagery and mark-making which oscillate between spontaneous eruptions of color, light, and form as seen into controlled lines and patterns, reflecting the range of form that emotion can take… My use of materials also reflects this idea of a range of self and our capacity for transformation on an emotional level. Oil paint and spray paint are stretched to their physical limits, transmuted into thick clotted dabs, thinned and thrown from a bucket, or carefully layered in translucent veils of glassy color."