Featured image: FLORESTA, Malcolm Cross, 2024, mixed media, 24 x 24 in. / 60.96 x 60.96 cm.
Malcolm Cross’s SEE, J19, and SEGMENTS OF TIME present a layered visual language where symbolism, abstraction, and emotional intensity converge.
Malcolm Cross creates expressive, symbol-driven paintings that explore perception, time, and identity through layered abstraction and dynamic mark-making.
Working in mixed media and acrylic, Cross constructs compositions that oscillate between raw gesture and structured iconography. His paintings operate as psychological fields, spaces where personal mythology, perception, and time are fragmented and reassembled. Through bold color, aggressive mark-making, and recurring symbolic forms, Cross invites viewers into a charged visual environment that resists passive viewing and demands active interpretation.
SEE, Malcolm Cross, 2025, mixed media, 36 x 36 in. / 91.44 x 91.44 cm.
In SEE, Cross centers the composition around a circular form enclosing a pair of lips, immediately invoking themes of perception, communication, and identity. The vivid pink ground is disrupted by black splatters and gestural lines, creating a sense of urgency and instability. The blue ring surrounding the central form acts as both boundary and focal lens, framing the image while suggesting containment. The lips, outlined in red and partially obscured, become a symbol of expression under tension, caught between visibility and distortion. The layered marks and drips reinforce a sense of immediacy, as if the act of painting itself is inseparable from the act of seeing.
J19, Malcolm Cross, 2026, mixed media, 72 x 48 in. / 182.88 x 121.92 cm.
J19 expands Cross’s visual language into a more intricate and architectonic composition. Vertical and diagonal lines intersect to form a scaffold-like structure populated with symbols, figures, and abstract motifs. The painting reads as a constructed system, part ritual diagram, part urban framework, where each element contributes to a larger, encoded narrative. Bright reds, blues, and yellows clash and interweave, creating a dynamic tension between order and chaos. The presence of repeated geometric forms and symbolic marks suggests a personal lexicon, one that hints at meaning without fully resolving into clarity. The scale of the work amplifies its immersive quality, drawing the viewer into a dense, almost labyrinthine visual field.
SEGMENTS OF TIME, Malcolm Cross, 2023, acrylic, 36 x 24 in. / 91.44 x 60.96 cm.
In SEGMENTS OF TIME, Cross distills his approach into a vertically oriented composition that emphasizes fragmentation and temporal layering. A central, heart-like form emerges amid intersecting lines and radiant bursts of color, suggesting both energy and vulnerability. The use of angular divisions and overlapping planes creates a sense of movement through time, as if multiple moments are compressed into a single surface. The contrast between controlled linear elements and spontaneous gestural marks reinforces the tension between structure and flux. This work positions time not as a linear progression, but as a series of overlapping experiences, fragmented, cyclical, and deeply subjective.
Across SEE, J19, and SEGMENTS OF TIME, Malcolm Cross constructs a visual language that merges symbolic intensity with painterly immediacy. His works function as dynamic systems where meaning is continuously formed and disrupted, reflecting the complexity of perception and internal experience. Through layered compositions and bold chromatic contrasts, Cross transforms abstraction into a site of inquiry, one that engages with identity, communication, and the passage of time. Together, these paintings assert the power of visual art to operate as both expression and investigation.
INVOCATION, Malcolm Cross, 2025, mixed media, 40 x 40 in. / 101.6 x 101.6 cm.