Subsurface Exposure explores geological pressure, rupture, compaction and exposure through materially driven abstraction.

Drawing on a background in geology and subsurface mapping, Ackers creates paintings that behave less like images and more like geological events — fault lines, compressed fields, intrusions and voids.

Oil, cold wax, earth pigments and mineral material are layered, eroded and compressed to produce surfaces that feel excavated rather than painted.

Notes on the work

“The works are not representations of landscape. They operate more like exposed geological sections — traces of pressure, fracture, uplift and burial. Large voids function as silence, depth or absence; materially dense passages behave like compressed strata or tectonic collision zones.”