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In her 1984 work Skybound, American painter Lilian Thomas Burwell cut into the blue-toned canvas to create positive and negative space, exploring how paintings can take up space without adding weight. This is typical of the artist’s practice—her shaped paintings often blur the line between the two disciplines of painting and sculpture.

Her artwork uses abstraction to create a personal, emotional response to the natural world that magnifies the intricacies of floral and botanical organisms. Burwell’s interest in nature is inspired by her family’s personal migration story from Washington, D.C., to Harlem, New York.

As her work with wall sculptures expanded throughout her career, Burwell added plexiglass to her process: She cuts the material with a power cutter and then places it in an industrial oven to soften. This base is then overlaid with the painted canvases. Burwell insists that none of these works are predetermined and that the whole process is akin to a dance where each brushstroke, cut, and placement is dependent on the previous step, creating a fluid piece of Abstract Expressionism. She is represented by Berry Campbell Gallery, where the artist had her New York debut solo show at the age of 93.