Helix series

Artist statement

Between 2014 and 2022, I focused on Boschian- and Giacometti-inspired figures in pen-and-ink sketches, drawing on notebooks, envelopes, and napkins. These intimate studies allowed me to explore line, form, and improvisation while navigating illness, limited studio space, and a practice in activism, poetry, video, and photography. Over time, the bots, beasts, ghosts, TVs, Sadistiks, angels, and boxes with legs evolved into expressive biomorphic forms that inhabit carefully considered abstract ecosystems.

In 2023, I created a small series of gestural abstract paintings. These canvases hint at the biomorphic figures that have long appeared in my work, though in an evolving, abstract mode rather than the fully realized characters of earlier and later periods. Sweeping marks, dynamic color, and layered gestures convey motion, rhythm, and the physicality of paint, bridging my sketch practice with the expansive abstraction of my current work.

— Macaulay Woods, February 2026