Common Time, 2023
Oil on canvas
16 x 16 inches
Elastic Primary Colors, 2024
Oil on canvas
36 x 30 inches
Women in a Park, 2016
Oil on canvas
50 x 60 inches
Jaywalking, 2022
Oil on canvas
84 x 92 inches
Skylarking, 2022
Oil on canvas
84 x 92 inches
Footsteps, 2022
Oil and metallic oil on canvas
72 x 48 inches
Hot Sun Cool Shadow II, 2015
Oil and metallic oil on canvas
60 x 60 inches
Sunday, 2022
Oil on canvas
60 x 60 inches
Saturday, 2022
Oil on canvas
60 x 50 inches
Yummy Yum, 2021
Oil on canvas
68 x 48 inches
Swingtime, 2021
Oil on canvas
60 x 50 inches
Days End, 2018
Oil on canvas
36 x 30 inches
Eye Opener, 2018
Oil on canvas
36 x 30 inches
Wonder Boy, 2015
Oil on canvas
84 x 60 inches
Brain Fever, 2018
Oil on canvas
60 x 50 inches
Variations on a Square (Yellow, Blue, Black), 2020
Glazed ceramic
19 x 17.5 x 15 inches
Double Gourd (Primary Triad), 2020
Glazed ceramic
17.5 x 14 x 14 inches
Oval with Black Flowers, 2020
Glazed ceramic
19.5 x 18 x 14 inches
Wabi-sabi Skinny Square, 2021
Glazed Ceramic and gold resin
25 x 8 x 25 inches
Double Gourd (Red/Orage Yellow/Blue), 2020
Glazed ceramic
17.5 x 21.5 x 20 inches
Contrapposto, 2021
Glazed ceramic
21 x 9 x 8
Judy Ledgerwood (b. Indiana, 1959) is a painter whose canvases and wall painting installations confront the history of abstract painting with traditions in the decorative arts. Her compositions consist of motifs derived from symbolic shapes associated with Paleo and Neolithic Goddess cultures throughout Europe. The broader vocabulary of shapes is comprised of circles, quatrefoils, and seed-like shapes organized within triangles and chevrons that are womanly ciphers symbolic of feminine power.
Judy Ledgerwood received a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has held numerous solo exhibitions, most recently at The Graham Foundation and Smart Museum of Art, Chicago, IL, Tracy Williams Ltd, New York, Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, TX, Hausler Contemporary, Austria, and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, among many others. She is the recipient of several awards including The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award, an Artadia Award, a Tiffany Award in the Visual Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, and an Illinois Art Council Award. Judy Ledgerwood's work is included in prominent public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen Switzerland, among others. In 2015, Ledgerwood was commissioned by the Embassy of the United States in Vientiane, Laos to create a monumental site-specific painting, and in 2018 she became the first Chicago-based artist to create an installation for the Art Institute's Bluhm Family Terrace.
A little over a year since ‘Sunny’ opened at Denny Gallery, New York, Rhona Hoffman presents an exquisite selection of Judy Ledgerwood’s large-scale paintings in Sunny Redux. It’s hard to write about Ledgerwood’s works in relationship to one another without getting caught up in formalist underpinnings of abstraction, interpretative language, or trying too hard to set out to contextualize the artists’ engrossment with color, form, and pattern. Initially, it was the intensity of play, how Ledgerwood teases both theory and history through the pleasurable (dare we say beautiful) translation of form and color, that felt like one possible route to entering the show. Yet, it felt like a disservice to the demand of the work, specifically at this time.
There are some artists who, after sustaining a successful practice for over forty years, are inclined to rest on their laurels. Judy Ledgerwood is not one of them. In “Sunny Redux,” a small exhibition of new works now on view at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Ledgerwood returns to the formal language she has built, this time using it to imbue a new tension into a suite of six oil paintings.
Episode No. 640 of The Modern Art Notes Podcast features artist Judy Ledgerwood and curator Lisa Volpe.
Because it's so easy on the eyes and served up in a nicely digestible serving size, you might be tempted to breeze right through the new paintings survey at Milwaukee Art Museum. But, '50 Paintings,' which opens Friday, Nov. 17, is like a fine wine or a great chef's most heavenly creation. It should be savor
The landmark survey 50 Paintings features works created within the last five years by 50 international artists, highlighting the artistic trends in practice today
Milwaukee Art Museum will show 'Art, Life, Legacy: Northern European Paintings in the Collection of Isabel and Alfred Bader,' which opens Sept. 29, and '50 Paintings,' a survey of work by 50 contemporary painters, starting Nov. 17
What distinguishes Ledgerwood’s work from the earlier generation of women artists working in the domain of Pattern and Decoration is its bluntness and humor.
Judy Ledgerwood: Sunny @ Denny Gallery
In her exhibition Sunny, Judy Ledgerwood has bold intentions. She began working on the paintings last January when she was searching for color during many gray days
There's been a resurgence in recent years of artists using materials like textiles and ceramics in siting domestic settings as creative spaces, a nod to the influence of the 1970s Pattern and Decoration (P & D) art movement.
LA Times Review of Judy Ledgerwood's current exhibition at 1301PE in Los Angeles.
Review of Far From the Tree at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
Review of Far From the Tree at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
Interview with the artist by Laura M. Mettam.
Review of Chromatic Paintings for Chicago and Blob Paintings at Rhona Hoffman Gallery.