reductive self-referentiality. Formally, Takenaga engages opposing elements of surface and depth, flatness and dimension, stasis and movement. In conceptual terms, critics identify persistent (if submerged) themes in her work involving personal history, wonder and dread, mourning and mortality, along with a sense of levity that she has called "earnest goofiness." Painting (2001–09) In the early 2000s, Takenaga committed to abstraction, working modestly scaled variations on a set format: centripetal or centrifugal patterns that radiate or coil from a slightly off-center focal point, forming all-over fields that evoke nocturnal skies and celestial forms (e.g., Night Painting, 2001). New York Times critic Ken Johnson described these paintings as "optically riveting and transcendentally suggestive [of] a swarming, spacey feeling like traveling at the speed of light through a galaxy or a psychic center of illumination." Her late-2001 work was created in the shadow of grief following the death of her mother; she immortalized the memory of both her parents in the ethereal works Shizue and Toshiwo—bright, radiating constellations of concentric dots and spirals on nebulous blue fields that convey both mortality and visual euphoria. Critics such as Art in America 's Robert Kushner identified an expansion of Takenaga's vocabulary in shows at McKenzie Fine Art (2003, 2005), which yielded surprising, more dynamic arrangements within her tight self-imposed parameters. Feathery swirls in Wave (2002) suggest studies of ornate, autonomous systems evoking both decorative cross-cultural and scientific imagery; later works resemble vibrant cellular or bubble forms (Rubazu), bulbous spiraled microorganisms (Tarazed #1), and jeweled mandala or Paisley patterns (Gold + Red). In subsequent work, she explored subdued palettes evoking loss—grays, white, black, pale greens and turquoises, and metallic golds and silvers—and forms suggesting ambiguous, otherworldly environs (Ghost Triptych 2007–8), molecular frameworks or the suction-cup undersides of sea stars and octopi (Ozma, 2009), and bent, skewed grids and lattices like three-dimensional, topographic maps of black holes that approach Op art, such as Angel (pink) (2008) and Zardo (2009). Post-2009 painting In 2010, Takenaga made two significant shifts in her work: she began incorporating a flat, linear element serving as both horizon and spatial division, and she relinquished some control, allowing chance elements and looser patterns (still dot swirls, undulating constellations and bursting whorls) to emerge in bolder compositions. Critics suggest the horizon line—normally a stabilizing element—disrupted her typically ordered work, allowing a wider pictorial range to evolve that alluded to imaginary landscape and aquatic as well