draw

Recent Life Drawings by Julia Ledyard

December 8, 2007 to January 19, 2008

Julia Ledyard holds a BFA from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and now lives and works in Fairfax, California.

All of Ledyard's drawings are from life, done in a moment, long or short. No drawings are preconceived, but always created while experiencing a space in time, looking at something specific, usually a person - still or in motion. All of the drawings in this exhibition were done in Edward Stanton's Drawing Circus.

Julia Ledyard is drawn to a gestural neo-expressionistic vocabulary of thin lines against big bold colored forms and strokes. Many of the patterns and graphic shapes are printed onto the paper with potatoes. She also applies paint with potato wedges to achieve an irregularity and rawness of the lines much different from what a brush can do.

Ledyard's recent work displays a palpitating interplay of autonomous abstract colors and forms on the paper and the materialization of a subject. The pieces enact the classic dance between the immediacy of material surface and the revelation of content. The viewer experiences the richness of form and line as an end in itself, and then the object or figure reveals itself, sometimes only for a moment before it retreats back into the physicality of being marks on paper. Ledyard rarely goes back to rework or add to a drawing once the moment has passed. This secures the pulsating and spontaneous quality of her works.

©2008 Smith Andersen North - Respective Artists. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction without written permission.