JUDY LEDGERWOOD

Since the beginning of her career in the 1980’s Judy Ledgerwood has been exploring light, color, and space in painting. Ledgerwood combines the formal vocabulary of concrete abstraction with influences from pop culture to create vividly colored compositions. Her paintings combine decorative patterning, central to textile design and other traditionally female crafts, with bold color and assertive brush strokes, traits associated with the male-dominated tradition of gestural abstraction. Often using stereotypically “feminine” elements, such as pastel colors and stylized floral patterns, Ledgerwood’s work merges formalist and feminist concerns. For this reason, the sensuality in Ledgerwood’s paintings is both immediate and subversive with the ability to resonate beyond its initial impact. For Ledgerwood, content lies in chroma’s ability to create moments of simultaneous harmony and disequilibrium. The aggression of her color palette and paint application undermines the stability created by the repetition of her marks.