Phong Bui interviews painter Katia Santibañez about life and her work.

Santibañez notes: "I do play with different tonalities. And I do think of them as colors. I also think colors relate to the idea of working with the force of opposition, for example, the vertical against the horizontal lines, and how they find their equilibriums within the grid. Oftentimes, I mix black and white with red, orange, and yellow, which is my own way of relating to Mondrian. In a way, I want to go further than Mondrian when he thought about verticality and horizontality and the idea of balance."

Katia Santibañez, Journey Of A Solitary Painter will be on view from October 20 – December 10, 2011 at Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York.