Chance plays a generative role in the practice of Liz Markus. Working with acrylic washes on unprimed canvas, she allows pigment to seep and spread as it dries, relinquishing full control over the final image. This process yields hazy, atmospheric fields of color that abstract and reframe imagery she appropriates from American history and popular culture.In 2009, Markus presented a suite of paintings examining Nancy Reagan’s role within her husband’s administration. Other bodies of work have drawn on figures from the Vietnam-era counterculture and the subversive currents of the 1980s, including Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Johnny Rotten, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.Beginning in 2012, Markus turned her attention increasingly toward landscape. These later works take inspiration from the sweeping 19th-century vistas of Frederic Edwin Church and from the Florida Highwaymen, a collective of 26 self-taught African American artists known for their luminous depictions of Florida’s natural environment.