Artist Reception: Max Cole

MAX COLE | THE BOUNDING CIRCLE

On view through October 10, 2021 at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art

The paintings included in The Bounding Circle were all created during an artist residency that Cole participated in in the mid-1990’s in Roswell, New Mexico, and were part of a show at the museum there at the end of her residency. Those included in this exhibition have not been shown since.

While previous works had tended to be darker, heavier, with undertones of reds and blues, influenced by the darker skies and light of New York and Europe, the light and space of Roswell changed Cole’s work, shifting her palette significantly into lighter tones of earth, whites, pale blues, grays. Roswell, not too far from Cole’s native panhandle region, was a bit like coming home.

The paintings in this exhibition show something of this transition – with darker works like Aeolus opening up into the more spacious (and tonally lighter) pieces like Pale Horse II or Datura. The titles don’t come first, but after, suggested by the finished paintings. This in itself is a clue to deciphering these works. Rather than looking for equivalencies, instead the viewer does well to sink gently down into experiences.

Also on view will be five new etchings pulled at Black Rock Editions, Santa Fe, NM. The original plates underlying these new prints were created in 1976, but an artist proof was not printed until the 1980’s, and even then they were not editioned. Since returning to New Mexico, the artist has been working with Black Rock to edition this series of prints representing various bodies of work from her career.