Longview Museum of Art presents Garden of Ambition, a solo-exhibition of large-scale, monochromatic artworks by New Orleans-based artist Mallory Page. Featuring 17 new works that range from 6x6-ft to 8x8-ft in size, the exhbition offers a sophisticated study in perception, exploring how measure changes in color can effect shifts in visual understand.
Page’s compositions employ multiple layers of monochromatic hues that cascade the canvas. Working with a delicate color palette, at first glance Page’s works appear soft, subtle, and traditionally “feminine.” Closer inspection reveals an arduous and meticulous process, in which over the course of many days, paint is both poured and applied with long, sweeping brush strokes, layer upon layer. As one moves across the painting, the color and the tone of the work shifts and changes, with some moments translucent and murky, as if light is shining through.Rendered on an imposing scale, the works become powerfully enveloping environments, complicating what was initially perceived as soft and delicate. Taken as a whole, Page presents a sophisticated painting codex—one that understands how painting can envelop the viewer, perplexing and intoxicating in equal measure. Page was raised in southwest Louisiana, a region with a vibrant culture and distinctive geographical landscape. Her work subtly and abstractly engages with this heritage, as well as with the questions that arise from the position of an independent woman and artist living and working within a traditional social terrain. Additionally, Page’s practice is informed by the legacies of first and second generation abstract expressionists (Agnes Martin, Helen Frankenthaler, Georgia O’Keefe) who explored similar questions of space/place and identity through abstraction, repetition, and process.