RAYLENE WARD

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Raylene Ward

There is a tension between the beautiful and the inane in paintings by Raylene Ward. The beautiful is evident in the decorative quality of her pieces especially in their richly textured surfaces. Yet because of the artist's level of abstraction and seemingly obsessive, labor intensive process, the works remain impenetrable, frustrating any attempt to attach specific meanings. Her paintings demand to be examined closely, forcing the viewer to concentrate on the shifting layered surfaces. Initially, her process may seem random or intuitive, but this is countered by the degree of translucency and the controlled relationship between the hues. Eschewing the perceived preciousness of a work of art, she deliberately exacerbates the decomposition of her paintings. Combining unstable media, such as hardware store adhesives and enamel paint, Ward challenges the idea of permanence. Even the shapes of her works seem to evoke the potential of metamorphosis; works from the Sticky Series appear to be parcels that could feasibly be undone to reveal yet another layer of formal relationships and decisions.