September Vhay is testing her tolerance for abstraction—a route she’s wanted to take for a long time, an approach empowered by her series of sumi-ink drawings. The red horses—studies of equine essence—convey character in select, serene brushstrokes. Such distillation requires courage and confidence on the part of the artist. “Telling the whole story is safer, expected,” September says. And rendering detail satisfies her observant character. “I love the nitty gritty, of rendering every eyelash so the eyes glimmer.” And yet, restrained eloquence speaks to her sense of spirit and gesture. In the past, she’s fallen in love with her compositions half-finished, when the psyche of the subject suddenly surfaced from the crosshairs of her marks. In those moments, there’s a freshness, a looseness that remains. Now, she is stopping there, a gutsy move considering the resolution collectors have come to expect of her work. Such risk-taking taps the 20 years she’s spent working as a fine artist. “I’m trusting myself more,”
