Enzia Farrell is an American oil painter recognized for her moody images of women

I habitually paint what I feel, even if it’s a landscape. If I try to paint something that isn’t on my mind, it accidentally turns into whatever is.

The work in the slides below was done in my twenties, when I was still finding myself. Punk rock and Basquiat had given us permission to be that raw — and it raised the same argument his work did: anyone can do this. Maybe. But not everyone did. In Los Angeles after the 1992 riots, rawness wasn't a style, it was the climate. What came out of that time is what's now called lowbrow — work that never asked the art world's permission in the first place.