Bloomfield, Wilkes at HWY 90 Gallery

Recent paintings by Jenny Bloomfield and Leslie Wilkes will be shown at HWY 90 Gallery in February. Although the work of both artists is colorful and non-representational, the works’ similarity ends there. Bloomfield’s work is typically large, painterly and expressive, while much of Wilkes’ work is on a smaller, more intimate scale and is composed of flat, colorful patterns.

Working from her studio in Oakland, California, Bloomfield creates luminous paintings and drawings on canvas and paper. Born in London, Bloomfield earned a BA from the Central School of Art and Design, London, in 1980 and since then has exhibited her work in Great Britain and the United States.

“I first chose to paint because the marks could be seen as a direct expression of an emotion: line, color and movement, there to be read like a large book open on the wall,” said Bloomfield. “It was satisfying to arrange the emotions and create an order and balance. This was a long time ago, but it was the beginning of my need to contemplate my responses to life."

“Painting is rich in the qualities that reflect these needs. It is direct and responsive, private and flexible. It proposes solutions and then raises new questions that are better than those with which one started.”

Marfa resident Leslie Wilkes will display recent gouaches on paper that reflect her life-long interest in pattern and bright color. Wilkes’s current work is based largely on geometric patterns from the 1960s, which she translates into black and white line drawings. She then uses layers of color to explore variable compositions. Every color shift redirects the rhythm of the pattern, creating a kind of controlled chaos.

"It is, in a way, a personal metaphor for me – the way I try to control life events, but ultimately encounter disturbances along the way,” said Wilkes. “Disturbances that lead to things unpredicted and often, like the images, something more compelling.”

In 2003 Wilkes saw the exhibition Quilts of Gee’s Bend at the Whitney Museum and was inspired by the quilt-makers’ faith in the intuitive process and their creative use of pattern. Originating with a grid-based framework, the quilts depart from their original structure, but retain enough connection to the pattern to stimulate the viewer’s involvement with the complexity of form, color and construction.

Ultimately, this is the type of visual experience for which Wilkes strives, when the eye can no longer focus on a singular passage within the painting, but is propelled to search and visually attempt to reassemble the repeated pattern. “When the painting becomes a labyrinth of shape and color, one may experience a kind of pleasure that is revealed through sight alone,” said Wilkes.

Wilkes received a BA from the University of Texas and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has had solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Austin and Marfa. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and was the recipient of the Milton and Sally Avery fellowship at the MacDowell Colony. Before moving to Marfa in 2005, she was Fine Arts Graduate Program Manager and faculty member at the California College of the Arts.

A reception for the artists will take place tomorrow, Thursday, February 8, from 5 to 7 p.m. The work will remain on display through March 10. The gallery is open every Friday and Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m.