Joanne Greenbaum’s recent canvases continue to be informed by her drawing practice but take a departure from a more formal and spare past work. Graphic formations that are broken up by painterly gestures allow different layers of meaning and visual readings to emerge. Combining multiple techniques and colors, Greenbaum explores the concept of gesture outside of its expressionistic trope. The paintings are surfaces on which to perform with paint, challenging the notion of “doneness” and “finishing”; this positioning is best manifested by the act of painting over or crossing off areas of the canvas. The system of numbers charts the chronological life of a painting and reinforces the self-referential process. She states: “In fact I make painting by building”—and with this body of work Greenbaum’s process is laid bare.

Michelle Grabner, in a review published in Flash Art, 2004 writes: “Greenbaum pines for the vagaries within the most rudimentary elements of visual language, complicating them with intuitive and emotional impulses. The result is both familiar and original but consistently self-confident”.