Colleen Topping
RITUAL:
the intimacy of sillyness
Exhibition Opening Party
409 Keap Street,
Williamsburg BK
Join us Wednesday March 4
7-9pm
Ritual: The Intimacy of Silliness
Colleen Topping
In Ritual: The Intimacy of Silliness, Colleen Topping taps into a visual language that is both personal and universal. Topping treats play not as a detour from seriousness, but as a disciplined and generative method of knowing. Drawing from the childhood “fortune teller” game—an object both universally familiar and quietly intimate—Topping establishes a ritualized structure through which intuition, repetition, and chance can coexist.
The fortune teller becomes both form and philosophy: a set of rules without fixed outcomes. Within this framework, Topping positions herself simultaneously as author and recipient, fortune teller and fortune receiver. The paintings emerge from this oscillation—between control and surrender, intention and accident—mirroring the way inner worlds are accessed not through force, but through permission.
Topping’s material process is central to this inquiry. Thick, unsanded gesso is applied deliberately imperfectly, preserving seams, ridges, and inconsistencies as part of the work’s foundation. Onto this ground, oil paint diluted heavily with gamsol is poured, pressed, and allowed to bleed across the surface like dye. Color arrives first as an unpredictable event, spreading freely before being slowly contained by thick, opaque outlines drawn directly onto the canvas. Gradients are mixed on the surface itself—through dry blending, wiping, and erasure—so that form appears to glow from within rather than sit atop the plane.
The paintings hold a sense of becoming—images that feel discovered rather than imposed. Neon and high-chroma palettes vibrate against the rough ground, allowing light to surface through subtraction as much as addition. Darker layers are wiped away to reveal brightness beneath, producing a sense of transparency, vulnerability, and inner illumination.
Recurring symbols—dandelions, balloon plants, breasts, bodies, scars—form a personal iconography that collapses the distinction between self and environment. These motifs are not illustrative but referential, operating as markers of memory, sensation, and embodied experience. The body appears not as a subject to be depicted, but as a landscape continuously interacted with and reinterpreted.
Ultimately, Ritual: The Intimacy of Silliness proposes play as a serious act of self-relation. By relinquishing the performance of gravity, Topping opens a space where sincerity can surface. Each work invites viewers into the ritual—not to decode a single meaning, but to enter a field of possibility shaped by intuition, imperfection, and the meditative guidance delivered through the hand.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I believe in the intimacy of silliness. To get connected with my inner world, I must actively release the performance of seriousness. Using the “fortune teller” (a game remembered from my childhood) as a ritual, I can explore the humorous, sensual, and surreal images behind my eyes.
The process of creating this object is familiar and easily replicated. Fold any flat sheet into the correct symmetrical shape, and fill each margin with a number, color, picture, or message.
There are repeating symbols that appear in everything I do. This pattern recognition is an abundant well of iconography to pull fortunes from. Observing my work, you will recognize the dandelion, the balloonplant, the body, the breast, and the scar. These are self-referential; I paint my body and the landscape I interact with.
My painting practice is just as balanced between improvisation and routine as this ritual. I love when the artist’s imperfect hand is built into the foundation of the work. I love when gesso is poorly laid and un-sanded. I trust my hand to intuitively lay the groundwork, to pull colors from my paint box and distribute them in thin, dreamy washes.
There is a dissonance in the execution of my desires- what I envision versus what I am able to represent. The more I am able to play on my canvas, the closer I am to realizing a sincere vision of myself. In my ritual there are rules, but no expectations, and therefore endless potential outcomes. I am the fortune teller and the fortune receiver.