For over twenty years, the color black has been the principal focus of Joan Witek's paintings, drawings, and prints. Following in the tradition of Velázquez and Manet, the artist employs black not for its gloomy and depressing associations but rather for its richness and delicacy, as well as for its dichotomous characteristics: it is at once sophisticated and primitive, expressive and aloof. Witek's earlier surfaces were entirely black, followed by more opened-up, gridded, and "stroked" compositions in which the underlying support shows through. This painting, from a recent series, is densely calligraphed, expressive, and mysterious in mood. Its overall filigreed pattern, suggestive of ancient motifs and glyphs, is punctuated with six square or rectangular forms that give the work a solid, geometric structural underpinning. The title refers to a mythological figure, common to many cultures, who playfully changes shapes as he moves between worlds and dimensions. Here, the contrast between the geometric forms and the lush surrounding texture conveys this impish duality.

Witek's connections to the Metropolitan Museum run deep. She visits the Museum regularly for solace and artistic inspiration, heading most frequently to the galleries of Asian, African, and contemporary art and those of European painting. She calls the Museum and its collections her "religion." Before becoming a full-time painter, Witek was a member of the museum's curatorial staff, in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (formerly the Department of Primitive Art), from 1971 to 1978.