This radiant, fluorescent, geometric painting by Beverly Fishman places two square forms—one, shades of green and blue; the other, shades of purple and pink—beside an orange and yellow crescent. The inner sections of the forms have been hollowed out, allowing reflected color from the super-shiny urethane paint to fill the resulting void.

Part of her Dividose series, this work brings elements together from Fishman’s extensive visual vocabulary of abstracted pharmaceutical forms. In this case, a partial pain pill is joined with two parietal opioids. Throughout Fishman’s oeuvre, certain motifs such as pain, depression, anxiety, and opioid addiction repeat. Yet, the forms she mobilizes to address these conditions frequently change. Sometimes, she is using only part of the form, in reference to someone only taking part of a pill. Partial forms combine with other partial forms to create a visual version of a chemical cocktail. In other cases, such as depression and pain, a great number of different pharmaceutical options exist to treat a particular condition. Thus, a reference to pain in one of Fishman’s paintings might differ from a reference to pain in another. The empty spaces in the forms relate to the phrase “two missing doses” in the painting’s title—a reference to people’s habit of neglecting to take a dose of their medication, whether by choice or out of economic necessity.