I'm Angela Justice, an abstract watercolor artist.

I'm interested in what a painting can do to a space. Not what it depicts, but how it changes the experience of being there.

A painting can interrupt a space, or become part of it. I'm after the second kind.

Can a painting make a space feel quieter without becoming passive? Can it hold softness without losing structure? Can it register when someone walks in and still have more to give over time?

That's what I'm trying to make.

I rarely begin with a fixed image. I start with a loose sense of structure, put down paint and water, and wait. I watch what emerges—what wants to come to the surface, what needs to stay buried, what the composition could be. Then I begin coaxing it forward. It's less like executing a plan than negotiating in real time.

I spent years as a dancer before any of this, which may be why the physical part of painting has never felt optional to me. I always work on the floor, at a scale that lets me move around the painting. I flood the surface, lift pigment, scrape it back and interrupt it. I keep returning to the tension between what holds and what gives way, because that's often where the painting starts to reveal itself.

My route to painting was not a straight one. I studied neuroscience, spent years as a C-suite biotechnology executive, and now work as an executive coach and advisor to senior leaders. Across all of it, I've been after the same thing—the fullest expression of what's possible. In a company. In a team. In a person. In a painting.

Before watercolor, I created sculptural work from hand-foraged and preserved mosses, lichens and other botanical materials. That work has been shown in two solo exhibitions and is held in private collections across the country. I still take on select botanical commissions, with timing shaped by the foraging and preservation process.