Sonya Rapoport was a prolific painter in the 1970s. Working on paper with airbrush and her Nu Shu stencils allowed her to improvise and work quickly. These works use vibrant, almost cacophonous color schema on white paper, often appropriating compositional elements from the survey charts she’d been using since 1971, including the grid, numerical data, and annotations.
Rapoport’s “Pandora’s Box” containing some of the original objects from which her Nu Shu language of stencils were derived.
Contrary to the smooth applications for which airbrush is used in design work, Rapoport altered her airbrush so that it sputtered and dripped to create textured fields. Pencil lines, ink stamps, and collage elements lent further complexity to this work.
Epic, 1974. Spray acrylic on paper, four panels, 330W x 44H each.