The luminous surface and vitality in mark-making have become increasingly important to M Pettee Olsen’s work. Drawn to color and movement to reference art histories in abstraction, motion, disruption, and the slippery nature of reality, she seeks not to obliterate or erase histories but rather to reference them obliquely. For Pettee Olsen, color and light are very much a part of that slippery sense of the world. She uses this as her guide as she adds, removes, and moves paint by diverse methods, like gravity, embracing its effects on the paint. Color and the quoted gesture are essential to her concerns in art – they are instrumental in addressing the changeable nature of perception and the subversion of absolutist narratives.