“…the paintings are visibly electric, empowered, lighted from within and alive…The combination is beautiful, ironic and rococo, bridging the gap between painters like Helen Frankenthaler and Post-Minimalists like Bruce Nauman and Keith Sonnier.”
– Roberta Smith
Ruby, Ruby, 2019, belongs to Mary Weatherford’s signature series of neon paintings, which are housed in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Tate in London, among others. It was this pioneering body of work that catapulted Weatherford to acclaim starting in 2012, after two decades of working in a panoply of disparate painterly styles. The Los Angeles-based artist’s work was most recently subject to a solo exhibition at the Palazzo Grimani during the 59th Biennale Arte of Venice this year.
Throughout this body of work, Weatherford utilizes diluted Flashe paint to create a translucent effect that forms a gradient of richness in hue. With a nod to such divergent predecessors as Helen Frankenthaler and Dan Flavin, Weatherford creates an atmospheric color field that is quite literally electrified by a neon tube that stretches across the length of the canvas. As Roberta Smith describes in The New York Times, “the paintings are visibly electric, empowered, lighted from within and alive. They are also ecstatic, pierced by beams of light, similar to Bernini’s “Ecstasy of St. Theresa.” The combination is beautiful, ironic and rococo, bridging the gap between painters like Helen Frankenthaler and Post-Minimalists like Bruce Nauman and Keith Sonnier. A strange unity is achieved. You can’t imagine the canvases without their neon, and Ms. Weatherford holds back her aggressive brush strokes to foster this reciprocity.”i“Here’s the thing about my work. If you think there’s another artist in it, it’s there…Georgia O’Keefe is there, Agnes Pelton’s there, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, de Kooning.”–Mary Weatherford
While referencing artistic predecessors, the Los-Angeles based artist in this way puts forward works that are resolutely her own. Indeed, it was the experience of driving through the town of Bakersfield California, alight in an array of neon signs, that prompted her groundbreaking use of neon in paintings. Weatherford’s neon quiver across the canvas akin to hand-drawn lines, eschewing the strict industrial geometries typically associated with the medium. Moreover, Weatherford notably conceives of the transformer and power cords as an essential part of the piece–forming an intentional compositional element.
The lyrical paintings belie the technical exactitude Weatherford is known for; each gestural brushstroke, the draping of cords and placement of the transformer are all part of an overarching vision the artist pursues with remarkable precision.
