Jennie C. Jones’s minimalist paintings incorporate noise-absorbing materials into their compositions, encouraging viewers to anticipate sound even in the quietest of environments. In recent paintings in this series, Jones continues to expand her research into the sonic, illustrating aural experiences visually through innovative approaches to geometry, color, gesture, and materials. In Red Grace Note (2021), which incorporates felt into its composition, she constructs a monochrome, painting the entire picture plane a bright red—an embellishment much like the trill of a grace note. Pushing against the idea that this gesture is a reductive one, the artist explains that the labor of creating evenly saturated surfaces—removing the hand—is actually a “maximalist process.” Ultimately challenging the connection between Minimalism and the reductive, Jones queries, “Reduced from what? The idea of lack can be turned on its head in order to be perceived as pure potential and opportunity. That maybe relates directly to African American improvisation and creative utility, to working inventively with spare means.”