Tullis StudioTransmutation
Artist: Mary Andrews
Oil, wax, pastel on canvas
2026
In Transmutation, layered oil pigment forms an atmospheric ground from which gestural ruptures emerge, suggesting an interior terrain where emotion and sensation become materially inscribed. The work considers how grief and pressure move through the body transmuting itself on the surface of the painting.
Title: Transmutation
Artist: Mary Andrews
Oil, wax, pastel on canvas
2026
48 x 48 in.
Transmutation is a body of work that investigates the body as a psychological and geological landscape. Across the canvas, Andrews constructs surfaces through repeated layering, erasure, and re-emergence of pigment, allowing the paintings to evolve as accumulative fields rather than predetermined compositions.
Within this context, the works function as interior environments—spaces where memory, grief, and physical sensation become materially translated into gesture and atmosphere. Forms often appear suspended between abstraction and anatomy, suggesting cavities, chambers, and thresholds rather than fixed figures.
In Transmutation, a concentrated eruption of mark interrupts a pale, bone-toned ground, creating a tension between containment and release. The painting reflects Andrews’ ongoing interest in how emotional experience inhabits the body and how painting can operate as a site of transmutation—where accumulated pressure gradually disperses into color, movement, and form.
For deeper reflections on the ideas, processes that shape each work, readers are invited to join Tullis Studio on Substack, where the studio shares extended essays, conversations, and ongoing documentation of the practice behind the paintings.