them as the culmination of a "process of reduction that long has signaled an artistic quest for spiritual purity." "Gulf War" works The looming U.S. Gulf War focused Sensemann in a more discordant, political direction in her "State" series (1990), which used geometric shapes to reference gun sights and targets, and thick paint application to create flux through shifts of light and vantage point. In the "Gulf War" series (1991), she translated masterworks of conflict and violence by Caravaggio, Delacroix, Gericault and Rembrandt into charged, jostling compositions of unrestrained abstract color, light and texture. Within these darker, chaotic works she placed unexpected "intrusions," such as the word "raft" or outlined votive candles, signaling the possibility of hope or resolution. Critic Kristin Schleifer described these expressionist paintings as a logical progression in Sensemann's work that evoked the forces of nature with a greater vitality than ever before. Collage work In 1993, Sensemann made an overt break with the strife of the "Gulf War" works and abstraction. She began creating decorative, collaged oil paintings on upholstery fabric that recalled the overflowing compositions and patterns of her fantastic landscapes. The paintings also indicated a shift to the more direct critical language of feminist collage. In a subsequent series of 600 collages, she embraced strategies of juxtaposition, fragmentation and rupture, reflecting the alternative influence of Hannah Höch, Meret Oppenheim, Martha Rosler and writer Susan Griffin. In works such as Objectivity as Means of Terminating Panics (1995), Sensemann made startling use of cut-up "Americana" images from 19th-century bibles, mid-20th-century childbirth, health and parenting manuals, encyclopedias, art reproductions and National Geographic images. Probing them with a politically incorrect sensibility, she compiled taxonomies of highly gendered images that offered fresh readings and satiric, sometimes disturbing commentary on roleplay, stereotypes, misinformation and "masculine" art. Photomontages Sensemann reworked these strategies in new works that combined Gothic sensibilities, feminist self-portraiture, and themes of voyeurism, vulnerability and exhibitionism influenced by the work of Sophie Calle and Ana Mendieta. Carefully superimposing photographs she took of organic substances over intimate close-ups of her face, she merged with flora, seaweed or cacti in "De-Monstrations" works such as Hide (1998), producing grotesque and seductive alterations to her flesh that suggested decay, ravage or regeneration, endured with a facial expression of impassivity. These works, created through non-digital means and ultimately numbering more than 700, recalled cultural constructions of symbiosis between women and nature and were interpreted