Ferris’s paintings are inspired by subjects that range from the broken up pixelation of digital images, rubbed out graffiti on New York streets to the glimmering city lights that are visible from her Brooklyn studio at night. She has commented that “bedazzled energy, and bright artificial light” are themes that have filtered into her painting process which explains the underlying, palpable current within her paintings.

Ferris started to use spray paint, in order to make gestural, expressive marks that moved on from the physical and historical implications of the traditional brush stroke. By using thinned consistencies of oil paint sprayed on, rather than an aerosol, she is reproducing the immediacy of a graffiti style mark, and its directness, on the same level that she might reference the hands-off monochromes of Josef Albers or the pictorial, free-wheeling depth found in the paintings of Albert Ohlen.