Joan Watts

According to essayist Lilly Wei, “Light, created out of increasingly subtle modulations of color and contained within an imagined space…[is] JOAN WATTS’ primary subject… Although Watts’ work is reductive, part of the Modernist legacy and often considered Minimalist, she insists it is not. Premised as it is on the immaterial and transcendent, in intention, it has greater affinities to the paintings and statements of Agnes Martin, the installations of James Turrell and other artists of light and space, to Buddhist teachings and the spiritual.” 

This substantial volume presents a comprehensive overview of Watts’ spare but deeply resonant paintings, made over the course of sixty years.