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<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nAscendance, 2020, acrylic on raw canvas, 84.5 x 68 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1960s, Colour Field artists such as Jack Bush and Julius Olitski were part of a shift away from the gestures of violence and angst of Jackson Pollock, adopting a \u201ccalmer\u201d language \u2013 something akin to a colour gestalt. Riding on this wave, Wolfond’s washes of thin colour on unprimed canvas began to achieve a nuanced play that propelled the viewer toward the contemplative reflective. By the 1970s, the artist had mastered her technique of mixing acrylic paints with water and clear medium to personalize the pigmentation with new expressive potential. The pearly texture of canvas was retained to imbue its colouration with shimmering translucence and depth.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nPassion, 2024, acrylic on raw canvas, 70.5 x 47.5 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Particularly magnetic are Wolfond\u2019s red works. As Gary Michael Dault observed, “Red, especially the red that Wolfond sluices and veils into her big, absorbing canvases, burns with an optical intensity from which there can be little escape, an intensity that cannot be softened, subdued, avoided or deferred.\u201d Wolfond\u2019s 2024 \u201cPassion\u201d inlays Rothko ecstasy without its sense of impending doom. Her \u201cCarnival in Rio\u201d (2011) pulsates with life. The painting is less viewed than entered.<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nCarnival in Rio, 2011, acrylic on raw canvas, 104 x 87 inches<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Song of Summer\u201d (2000) features multiple layers of Wolfond’s signature soft, floating tiles \u2013 an airy dissolve of warm and cool. Entirely abstract, the painting tugs at the viewer for morsels of figuration in a way that the reading of Rorschach inkblots raids a subject’s psyche for personally emotive plot lines. In that respect \u201cThe Song of Summer\u201d is not only a tool for self-reflection, but a possible psychological balm. It\u2019s here that we arrive at the fundamental positivity of Wolfond\u2019s art. While her red \u201cPassion\u201d painting may have suggested a blazing end of a day, \u201cThe Song of Summer\u201d left the door open for a dawn to the next.<\/p>\n\n\n