This triptych's collective title, If Not for Love of Thee, is also the title of the panel on the right. I feel that it leans toward the emotional—rooted in the symbolic language of blossoms and offerings and therefore, the outward expression of devotional longing. Cocooning in Place, the one the middle feels quieter and more interior, like a suspended moment of a chrysalis before change. Indra, King of the Devas reaches upward, drawing from mythology and ceremony to invoke a sense of power and divine order. Together, they reflect different aspects of the same inquiry: how can form, color, and pattern be used to transmit energy, attention, and intention?
At the core of my practice is a commitment to mystical abstraction—an approach that begins with recognizable forms (flowers, plants, dirt, wood, leaves) and sometimes through a decorative sensibility, distilling them into something more ambiguous and symbolic. This is not abstraction for its own sake, but a method of opening the image into multiple realms—bodily, botanical, spiritual, and psychological. I often work through collage sketches first, then translate these into oil paintings, where the rhythms of repetition and mirroring take on a more meditative or trance-like quality. Most of my work goes through multiple iterations in order to find its most resonant conclusion and since each iteration builds on the one before, making them is a ritualistic practice for me. - R. Kintisch, Summer 2025