History. Recollection. Found material. Lineage.

In her latest body of work, Gove mines her personal and aesthetic history for source material. The re-use of scraps of fabric, old letters, yellowing labels and other detritus from the lives of familial others, creates something new from the old. Their resurfacing in the built up, washed over and scratched out faces of her panels suggests a new inquiry in the artist's project.

After so many years of keeping her imagery completely non-objective, Gove has given in to the temptation of these fragments, so compelling for their form and their history. She treats these materials with layers of wash and over-painting that express elements of the underlying material, which nonetheless maintains its reticence. These works have a more relaxed, though highly considered architecture, and return to expressive elements of the artist's earlier paintings. She is also more liberal with her use of black in offsetting the natural tones. The high octane, pure pigments have given way to subtly mixed paints.

Although still abstract, Gove's work is tiptoeing into her personal narrative, and many of her pieces serve as metonyms for relationships or individuals. The building up and tearing down is the only way to access the flesh of her inspirations, which produces tensions and paradoxes in the work. To borrow a phrase, Gove is determined that her process provides a natural history of the surface of the painting.