As part of the Backstory series, Zachary Keeting reflects on his work. Zachary Keeting & Anahita Vossoughi: Rockless Volume is on view at Fred Giampietro Gallery, New Haven through February 21, 2015.

Keeting writes: "The surfaces [of the paintings] are now riddled with overt gesture, yet they’re still built slowly. I punch, scrape, shake, blot, pour, and stain, but a great amount of thought goes into spatial orchestration, to the arrangement of charismatic zones, where one form touches (or avoids) another… And the difficulties of communicating content within this arsenal of movement: how accurate and representative can the contour of a spill be? Who can be summoned with a turn of the wrist, with a rapidly plunging line? Do these abstractions contain heat, can they represent longing? I want the pieces to be unabashedly sensuous. Does the improvisational energy overshadow the specificity of subject?"