“Colors charge us both externally and internally. On an intuitive level, I’m guided by the colors in nature.”
E voking mystical dreamscapes that draw the viewer into their very center, Jennifer Guidi’s textured canvases are meditative. Guidi has incorporated sand in her practice since 2013, allowing her to craft tactile works; she layers sand, pigment, and acrylic polymer, then impresses the surface, making marks systematically. Many of her more recent works radiate from a central point on the canvas, which for Guidi, changed everything: “In my earlier abstract sand paintings, I made more random marks using sticks of different sizes. But I didn’t feel satisfied with the organic patterns that emerged. Everything changed when I fixed a center point and worked out and around it. The repetition and the movement began to take on a meditative aspect that, I think, reads in the finished pieces.” Executed in 2016, In the Morning I Watch You Rise is sublime. Presenting a gradient of warm, rose tones which deepen toward the bottom of the canvas, the present work epitomizes Guidi’s meditative approach to her practice for, standing in front of it, one is lost within a sphere separate from lived reality.
Right: Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Nets OPRT, 2004. Private collects ion.
With it’s intimately dynamic and compelling surface, In the Morning I Watch You Rise transports you—it possesses rhythm intrinsic to Guidi’s body of work which embodies a fundamental investigation into the nuances of surface, line, and color. Guidi’s highly sought after work is included in the permanent collects ions of museums around the world, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Rubell Family collects ion, Miami; and Sammlung Goetz, Munich.
