Can art be bold and subtle at the same time?
When it comes to the abstract paintings of longtime Denver artist Wendi Harford, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”
Seven of her large-scale works — the largest measuring 88 by 104 inches — are on view through Sept. 5 at the Ironton Gallery, comfortably filling the compact, L-shaped space.
The solo show, titled “big-lots,” came as a pleasant surprise to me, because I was completely unfamiliar with her work.
It turns out that Harford is no newcomer to the Denver scene, having moved to the city in 1973 to pursue a bachelor of fine arts degree at the University of Denver.
Although the artist moved back to her native New York a couple of times, Colorado has remained her main home since. But she has kept a low profile, showing mostly in the city’s cooperative galleries and less widely known commercial spaces.
Maybe this offering will be an overdue springboard to broader recognition. She deserves it.
Harford paints with compelling authority. If the basic concept behind her paintings — marrying abstract-expressionism with graffiti art — is hardly new, she has used it to develop a distinctively complex and striking aesthetic.
The main artistic influences that she cites — Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Julian Schnabel and the Wyeth family — span the latter half of the 20th century and range across a diversity of styles.
So, perhaps it’s not surprising that at first, her works can seem divergent, even disconnected. There is nothing else in the exhibition, for example, that looks anything like “Endless Summer,” an enthralling, eye-teasing composition of overlapping, multicolored horizontal stripes.
What becomes clear after closer examination is that the stripes are actually a series of canvas-long, slightly uneven paint drips, half started from one edge and half from the other. To achieve the horizonality, Harford simply rotated the canvas.
Rather than a sense of geometric abstraction, as one might find in the strict striped paintings of, say, Gene Davis, there is a less structured quality about this work, a kind of controlled (or at least semi-controlled) spontaneity.
But while “Endless Summer” might appear to differ from everything else on view, it actually shares that quality and at least two others with the rest of the pieces: a hushed intensity and opaque layeredness.
These elements all contain inherent, seemingly contradictory dualities, which challenge perceptual expectations, broaden the complexity of these pieces and deepen their visual appeal.
The hushed intensity can be most obviously seen in the grays and blacks that dominate many of these works, but it also is visible in a painting such as “Untitled Red,” which is pervaded by a more aggressive color.
But through careful layering, with ghostly shadows of abandoned versions of the composition faintly visible below the surface, the rusty red seems slightly aged — tamed in a way.
This painting is among the most nuanced and elegant in the exhibition, with a few spectral traces faintly curving across the surface and a kind of partially erased graffito word not quite managing to disrupt the work’s overall tranquility.
Opaque layeredness can especially be seen in “Pressure Drop,” where Harford makes evident use of house paint, with its dull, non- translucent look taking away from a sense of surface depth.
But she counteracts that flattening effect by deliberating layering the upper third of the canvas with expressionist swirls of black and gray that look like a mass of party streamers hanging down from a ceiling.
Boldness and subtlety as one? You bet.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“big-lots.”
Art.Ironton Gallery, 3636 Chestnut Place. This nonprofit art space presents a solo exhibition of large-scale abstract paintings by Denver artist Wendi Harford. Through Sept. 5. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays. Free. 303-297-8626 or .
