Art has long been inspired by the use and stylization of drapery and fabrics. Classical Greek sculpture is testament to the fact that authority, allurement, prophecy and power can all be rendered within the pleats and crimpage of folded cloth. On a spring day in 1953, Aldous Huxley, under the influence of mescaline, came to realize the import of artists’ fascination with “the inexhaustible theme of crumpled wool or linen.” Huxley detailed French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau’s expressive use of fabric in the following way: “Not an inch of smooth surface here, not a moment of peace or confidence, only a silken wilderness of countless tiny pleats and wrinkles, with an incessant modulation—inner uncertainty rendered with the perfect assurance of a master hand—of tone into tone, of one indeterminate color into another.”1 Surveying Rainbow’s Bend—Bonnie Maygarden’s exhibition at Ferrara Showman Gallery—one can observe the continuation of the same inexhaustible theme.
Atlanta-based Bonnie Maygarden’s fourth solo show at the gallery finds the artist expanding upon the illusory surfaces that have become the defining feature of her work. As in the world of digital design, gradients are ubiquitous in Maygarden’s paintings. In the same way that gradients mask flatness and add dimensionality to digital surfaces, gradients here serve to amplify the impression of space, mimicking proximity to a light source. A thermal register is made clear in Closer to the Sun, where imagined heat emanates from the lower left-hand corner, traversing diagonally to the upper right while speckled embers dance across the canvas. Patient inspection rewards the viewer and animates the experience of the work—details often emerge only after extended scrutiny.