Pattern Painting

In 1970, Sonya Rapoport discovered a series of antique geological survey charts in a desk she’d purchased. Drawing and painting directly on these found papers, she continued to explore the set of stencils she’d begun using in her graphic paintings of the late 1960s. This personal cosmology of form transformed into what she called her Nu Shu language – a collection of stencils that represented gendered symbols – a plastic housing was a uterus, a mandarin orange was a fetus, a pool cue holder was an udder, a fleur-de-lis was an infant, etc.

As her interest in exploring the meaning of these symbols grew, she began using them in large-scale acrylic and airbrush paintings and smaller works on paper.

These works represent a critical transition to Rapoport’s interest in information, symbolic communication, and visual analysis, and were the culmination of her three-decade engagement with painting.