May 13, 2018
Michael Hedges’ expressionist paintings are as much about energy as they are about colour and texture. The energy, both in his physical approach to applying paint to the support as well as the colour harmonies across the compositions, activates the surface and the viewer’s experience. Hedges’ passionately embraces Abstract Expressionism with his own color-based approach to expressionist and gestural abstract painting. According to the artist, his works, ‘begin as a problem of two or more colour relationships to be explored through form’. He then pursues multiple parallel paths to resolve the ‘problem’ on many separate canvases. An example of Michael Hedges’ high energy and process- driven approach to create dynamic surfaces and colour combinations.
This presentation includes recent paintings from 2016 and 2017. Roughly half are painted on natural linen in which Hedges’ approach is a little different than on canvas, revealing the linen support and numerous areas where the pigment is applied in thin brushy strokes to expose the weave and texture. There are still robust areas of saturated pigment applied in his usual thick and impasto strokes.