In her initial approach to the canvas, Quarles begins by making marks that evolve into line drawings of human forms and body parts. She then photographs the work and uses Adobe Illustrator to draw the backgrounds and structures that ultimately surround the figures. In a reversal of the conventional layering of a composition, Quarles’ figures precede and even dictate the environment that they come to inhabit. Quarles’ fascination with the subject of bodily experience and identity is illustrated by the ambiguous figures that populate her practice. Tangled arms and legs emerge in her paintings, while perspectival planes bisect bodies, simultaneously grounding and dislocating them in space. The intersection of Quarles’ figures and planes analogise the imagined and prescribed boundaries of identity. ‘Fixed categories of identity can be used to marginalise but, paradoxically, can be used by the marginalised to gain visibility and political power,’ Quarles has said, ‘this paradox is the central focus of my practice.’