Isabelle Friedrich McTwigan works through the idea of “units”—of time or of objects, such as a sheet of paper, a strip of tape, or a handprint—as structures that operate as both image and item. Her work focuses on the in-between, examining how pictorial order is unsettled through residue, image, sequence, and object, and how meaning accumulates through these relationships. A strip of painter’s tape on canvas can function as a physical barrier—something that could be peeled away—or be rendered as trompe l’oeil.

Through ink transfer, monotyping, body prints, and painting, McTwigan examines how materials resist or embrace form, as well as the idiosyncrasies of specific kinds of content and the impossibility of fully capturing them. She tests how layers can register different temporalities—slowness, repetition, interruption, mechanical and manual. Gesture and symbol blur, and time becomes less about the clock and more about structure: a frame that holds the work.

Isabelle McTwigan lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Recent exhibitions include as if it is at Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York (2025), Comparative Catharsis at Living Gallery (2025), and presentations at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and Pratt Institute. In 2024, her work was shown at Steuben Gallery, DeKalb Gallery, and in Creek Show along the Newtown Creek Nature Walk, a project she also curated.

McTwigan has participated in exhibitions with NADA, the New York School of the Arts, and Pratt Institute, and previously showed work during Art Basel Miami Week. Her writing has appeared in With Friends Like These magazine (Spring 2025). Residencies include COPE NYC, a printmaking residency at Pocoapoco in Oaxaca, Mexico, and a summer program at the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK) with Valérie Favre and Robert Lucander.

She received an MFA in Painting with Honors from Pratt Institute in 2025, supported by graduate and Rogalski scholarships. She also studied printmaking at the New York School of the Arts and painting at the Art Students League of New York.