Judy Ledgerwood is a Chicago-based American abstract artist whose practice is influenced by feminism, postmodernism, and the Pattern and Decoration movement. Working across painting and ceramics, Ledgerwood explores materiality, colour, and pattern, and is known for her distinct canvases composed of quatrefoils and diamond-patterned grids.
Read MoreLedgerwood was born in Brazil, a small farming community in Indiana. In childhood, she was encouraged by her mother to make her own pictures, rather than being given colouring books. She regularly visited the Impressionist collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, to which she attributes much of her knowledge of colour theory, citing Monet as a key influence.
In 1982, Ledgerwood graduated with a BFA at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she met her now-husband, artist Tony Tasset. In 1984, she graduated with an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).
Nearly a decade after finishing graduate school, Ledgerwood returned to SAIC to teach. Soon afterward, she began teaching full-time at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Raised in a family of quilters, Ledgerwood explores a vast range of patterns, and how they may be disrupted. Fusing symbolic shapes related to Paleo and Neolithic Goddesses with the paint drips and impasto integral to abstraction, Ledgerwood aims to facilitate a 'first person' experience in her work—bypassing the digital mediation that has dominated image-making since the late 1980s.
In 2014, Ledgerwood was commissioned to complete a site-specific painting for the Graham Foundation's historic Madlener House in Chicago. She transformed the first-floor gallery spaces with floor-to-ceiling colour, painting the walls with fluorescent hot pink and metallic diamond and quatrefoil patterns. Ledgerwood's immersive ornamentation dramatically contrasted with the house's simple Prairie-style architecture.
In 2018, Ledgerwood produced a series of large-scale works for the opening of Rhona Hoffman Gallery's new 1711 West Chicago Avenue location. Far From The Tree focused on the artist's well-established vocabulary of motifs, delving into female sexuality and her family connection to quilt-making. Drunkard's Path (2018) combines oils and metallic paints in a fractured pattern of pinks, purples, and golds, with the grid made up of different shapes and sizes. Titled after a specific quilting pattern, the pictorial logic of Drunkard's Path reflects 'the chaos of this time'.
Between 2016 and 2022, Ledgerwood developed a series of Majolica earthenware vessels at the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory in Munich, decorated with her signature patterns and bright colours. These were presented for Ledgerwood's 2022 exhibition, Summer Highlight at Häusler Contemporary. Acting as both icons of domesticity and a metaphor for the human body, the ornate vessels were named after various women—Helen, Barbara, or Veda (all 2022) for example—which were shortened in the smaller-scale works.
Ledgerwood has produced several notable public commissions, including a stained glass installation at Bir-Hakeim metro station Paris (2008); Chromatic Patterns for the Graham Foundation, Chicago (2014); a large site-specific painting for the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane, Laos (2014); Chromatic Patterns for the Bloomberg mural, New York (2016); and an installation for the Bluhm Family Terrace, Art Institute of Chicago (2018).
Ledgerwood has received numerous accolades across her career, including the Art Academy of Cincinnati's Wilder Travelling Fellowship, (1982); The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1997); Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts Grant, Northwestern University, Chicago (1997, 1998); URGC, Northwestern University (2000); Northwestern Alumni Grant (2000).
Judy Ledgerwood has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions.
Select solo exhibitions include Summer Highlight, Häusler Contemporary, Zurich (2022); Color Walks, 1301PE, Los Angeles (2019); Beyond Beauty, Häusler Contemporary, Zurich (2019); Power Pose, Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston (2019).
Select group exhibitions include Nur Skulptur, Häusler Contemporary, Munich (2019); Surface/Depth: The Decorative After Miriam Schapiro, Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2018); Riot Grrrls, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2016); To Sophie, Sonia, Elsa, Hannah..., Häusler Contemporary, Zurich (2016).
Judy Ledgerwood's Instagram can be found here.
Annie Curtis | Ocula | 2022
