Like clouds, abstract paintings invite our own inferences and preoccupations, showing us what we want to see. Pushing against this with the ostensible goal of equanimity, critics, when writing about abstract works, frequently latch onto parsings of an artist’s biography or espoused conceptual or ideological framework. In discussing her own practice, Emma McIntyre explicitly disavows these strategies of reception. The New Zealand–born, Los Angeles–based artist makes abstract paintings that are self-aware, witty, and dense with art-historical references but intentionally murky with regard to the particular intentions of the individual who rendered them into being. . .