Sofia Leiby, “Thinking Creatively With Pictures”

Leiby’s abstractions are based on psychological drawing tests used to assess the unconscious attitudes and motivations of patients by asking them to draw various images (trees, faces, figures) within a series of boxes arranged in a grid. The results are judged by different criteria—drawing time, the order that the squares are filled in, etc—and for the work here, Leiby begins by silkscreening each canvas with examples of completed tests she discovered in her research. She then paints over them with Expressionistic brushwork. The point, according to the artist, is to “self-reflexively address the relationship between mark-making and subjectivity.”