Judy Ledgerwood: Cold Days

This publication accompanies the exhibition at the Renaissance Society, January 10–February 21, 1999.

In this cycle of Judy Ledgerwood's paintings, winter light and atmosphere are distilled into abstract fields of shimmering iridescent color and pattern that seduce the eye and elicit the intelligence of nature's ethereal mysteries. The delicate surfaces of her carefully patterned canvases shimmer and resonate with the harsh cool beauty typical of the Midwestern winter landscape at its most unforgiving. Or, make-up and women's fashion—take your pick. In these paintings, Ledgerwood investigates the somewhat uneasy intersection of ornamentation, fashion and the Sublime. The accompanying essay by Craig Adcock, Professor of Art History at the University of Iowa, illustrates how Ledgerwood challenges typically male-identified notions of the Sublime in modernist painting.

Published by the Renaissance Society, 1999, softcover, 48 pages, 12 x 9 inches.