Balancing out formal and emotive concerns, my current work addresses the tension between the formal values of abstract painting and the emotional concerns that are the ultimate source for the work. Painted on paper attached directly to the wall the monochromatic red painting, the works nest shapes within each other but allow the enclosed forms to refuse to be fully contained, to push against and through that containment. Emerging out of a difficult personal experience, the work enacts the tensions implicit in this experience in formal terms, at once exhibiting the emotive tension yet holding it at a distance. Process is an essential part of working through these tensions to the final painting. In a series of progressive moves hard-edged lines are constructed with a squeegee, evaluations are made of the current state of the painting, and further moves continue to be made until the painting is declared finished. The final painting cannot be predicted from the initial move and revisions of many of the completed marks are not allowed. This is painting that hearkens in some ways back to the modernist tradition of abstract painting but, in a manner more akin to post-modernism, does not buy into the ideal of completeness and stability of modernism. This refusal of stability relates to my current work in painting to the photograph-based books that constituted a major portion of my earlier career as an artist. Dealing with issues of personal and gender identity, these works enacted in a somewhat more personal manner the tensions that are treated in formal terms in the current work. The book work is contained in the collections of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University and The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.