Jennifer Samet interviews painter Erika Ranee.

Asked about the materiality of her work Ranee comments: "when I do pours, or put shellac down, or spritz the painting, and come back the next day, it does not look the way I had planned. That’s why I do it. It forces me to relinquish control. If I fixate too much on the painting, I get focused on correcting things… As I build layers, I’m thinking about the interplay between materials, and histories. I can pull tape off and leave the remnants of it. The shapes become a history of that. The histories build up. Sometimes you don’t even see it, and sometimes you open a window onto it. The painting always pushes back."