This body of work is a long running series of paintings named from a line in Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet XVII. “I love you as Certain Dark Things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” I worked from the English translation by Stephen Tapscott from the original Spanish version. The poem is the scaffolding for the abstract visual language I developed over a span of six years. In the context of painting and poetry, I’m interested in translation and adaptation, and the space in between, where words and objects commune and shape-shift into new forms. I love the way a poem can become like a prayer or a mantra. A north star in the studio and a perfect comrade to the vastness of abstraction.