Ledgerwood’s practice, deeply rooted in the history of abstract painting, greatly expands upon and explodes its conventions. Drawing from a wide range of sources in traditionally female dominated artistic realms such as fashion, decorative arts, textiles, and others, Ledgerwood confronts the viewer with a powerful and subversive female voice. Through careful consideration of heroic, architectural scale, optically charged hues, and rhythmic patterns, Ledgerwood creates paintings that necessitate a present and active experience with the viewer.

Hard Jam is a selection of new paintings by Ledgerwood that continue to embrace visual pleasure with a confrontational spirit. Emerging out of her recent investigations, this group takes a more aggressive stance toward painting as display through heightened color tensions, optical vibrations, and an imposing physical presence. The works are declarative, atmospheric, and demand visual engagement. They are as much about the experience as about the form. Ledgerwood boldly drapes repeating motifs on top of the canvas, allowing the paint to fold and hang in space. The confident exhibition of thread-like drips, exposed edges and perspectival shifts not only evokes the downward pull of a hanging form, but also reveals the artist’s hand and the sheer materiality of the paint. Shimmering golds placed against luminous turquoises, magentas, fluorescent greens and reds dance and shift with the light. These careful juxtapositions of low and high chroma weave us in and out of the paintings, engaging us in a temporal experience that is at once optically fatiguing and addictively inspiring.