Joan Witek
Monotype
Joan Witek has used the color black for her life as an artist on both canvas, paper and film. While appearing to be simple and easily grasped there is an ongoing language of proportion and meaning in this abstraction for her. Black is usually considered the absence of color: it is severe, rigorous, associated with death, or depression or repression. But as Lilly Wei has written: "Witek plays these oppositions in her work: black being ascetic and alluring, meditative and expressive, flawless and flawed, fierce and demure, a distinct unequivocal presence, yet subtle, elusive."

I am attracted to black is because of the beauty of the color and for me, its infinite variety. It is a color that has been my inspiration since I began painting. -Joan Witek (New York, 2013)