Jillian Steinhauer remembers painter Denyse Thomasos, who died unexpectedly July 19 at age 47.

Steinhauer quotes John Yau: "Thomasos is known for her abstract paintings in which images of housing blocks, tiered parking garages, warehouses, scaffolding and abstract passages occupied an expanding, hyperbolic space. Her multi-layered, constructed space evokes something between a merry-go-round and a tornado, something under extreme centrifugal pressure. It's as if everything is threatening to bust loose, and the painting itself can barely contain the accumulating forces. As Thomasos' friends will readily attest, the dynamic forces found in her paintings were synonymous with her being. She was a force of nature."