By taking the primary element of the brushstroke as his principal tool, Vanderhyden takes a challenging stance among contemporary abstractions while being rooted in the history of Morris Louis, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. He begins with a complex ground that is sanded almost to a polish, and the “subject” takes shape through the intricate balance of application and removal of color. Color is Vanderhyden¹s more discretionary tool, and the new paintings range from lurid oranges to intense greens and violets with a grisly dark red acting as the bridge between the two.

In a recent essay about Vanderhyden’s work, Lane Relyea wrote:

Vanderhyden makes the image of insubstantiality seem a byproduct of industrial toxins and materials, of a lethally corrosive process leaving the merest ghost of form. And yet these ghosts count in Vanderhyden’s art as figurative, with each regally immortalized in portrait form.