Aimee Walleston talks to painter Rita Ackermann about her new series of work Fire by Days, on view in a solo exhibition at The Journal Gallery, Williamsburg (through June 3, 2012) and in the group show Mix/Remix at Luhring Augustine, New York (through June 9, 2012).

Walleston writes that Ackermann's "loose, understated abstractions are often rendered exclusively in indigo and red oil and enamel – newer works also include a nude tone – and touched by bursts of spray paint. The title of the series derives from 'Vacancy in Glass' by poet Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, whom Ackermann discovered through the writings of Antonin Artaud. The poem's final lines, 'In a swift white line/On a black space/A brushstroke/Signifying absence,' imply the flight of a bird as a symbol of loss, and reflect the artist's new impetus toward unbound, gesture-based abstraction."