JENNIFER WOLF • ABSTRACT 2+2

On Exhibit through August 27, 2022

ARTIST STATEMENT

For nearly two decades Jennifer Wolf has nurtured a palette derived from nature to create paintings that recall the very sources of her colors. From grinding mineral pigments excavated from sites around the world to boiling plant and insect dyes alloyed by mineral mordants, Wolf has explored the types of esoteric and difficult color sources increasingly lost to the ready availability of manufactured paints. It is a bold choice in the face of modern convenience to go so deeply into color that depends on such precise and laborious technique, but Wolf’s paintings belie this effort, instead exhibiting a loose and vibrant exuberance. It is easy to be swept up in the beauty of color, but her newest work on large format silk resists using traditional forms of mark making typical to dye work, instead deriving her visual language from explorations with the materials, keenly observing organic interactions and finally isolating these events to yield complex chiaroscuro compositions. It is painting in the truest sense, using dyes in the service of an invented visual language to create subject and object through color and form. The interaction between the painter’s hand and natural flow has long been a theme for Wolf, and once again she delivers thoughtful stories told through this collaboration with the natural world, gently coaxing order from the wily clutches of chaos.