Blackness Light

Judy LedgerwoodWW-1992-037098

1992·Watercolor over graphite on off-white wove paper·28.1 × 37.5 cm (11 1/8 × 14 13/16 in.)

<p>Ledgerwood earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1984, and she has long exhibited large, colorful paintings in which the repetition of forms and the interaction of tones play a crucial role. This intimate watercolor presents a pulsing, liquid shroud that seems to barely cover a source of brilliant light.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1992
Medium: Watercolor over graphite on off-white wove paper
Dimensions: 28.1 × 37.5 cm (11 1/8 × 14 13/16 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Judy Ledgerwood

Artist

Judy Ledgerwood

Painting

Judy Ledgerwood is an American abstract painter and educator, who has been based in Chicago. Her work confronts fundamental, historical and contemporary issues in abstract painting within a largely high-modernist vocabulary that she often complicates and subverts. Ledgerwood stages traditionally feminine-coded elements—cosmetic and décor-related colors, references to ornamental and craft traditions—on a scale associated with so-called "heroic" abstraction; critics suggest her work enacts an upending or "domestication" of modernist male authority that opens the tradition to allusions to female sexuality, design, glamour and pop culture. Critic John Yau writes, "In Ledgerwood’s paintings the viewer encounters elements of humor, instances of surprise, celebrations of female sexuality, forms of vulgar tactility, and intense and unpredictable combinations of color. There is nothing formulaic about her approach."

Brazil, IN, USA

Full artist profile →