Pamela Jorden

Philip Martin Gallery is pleased to present, "Light Falls," the gallery's second solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles-based artist, Pamela Jorden. “For me, color is surprising," Jorden notes, "My response to it can be totally visceral and emotional, and this makes it endlessly exciting.”

Pamela Jorden applies paint in directed, pushed and dragged flows, creating markers through active and physical manipulation of materials. Working on shaped stretchers, Jorden pulls, stretches, and incises linen to wrap around convex and concave curves. Jorden often refers to landscape and qualities of light in her work, associating the exposed areas of linen with the color and texture of the sandy soil of Southern California, where she resides.

"My paintings are improvisations, exploring qualities of reflection, energy, movement, magnetism, and light.” Jorden comments. In a recent essay, she writes that each painting begins with a proposition, what she describes as "an impetus to begin or enter.” Propositions are  basic building blocks in Jorden's work, similar to those in logic or calculus. A proposition could be a color relation, an applied mark on bare linen, the shape of a given canvas, or the relation between two separate canvases in a multiple-canvas work.

"Another recent inspiration, especially while making this body of work is the improvisational compositions of musicians and sound artists. I’ve recently been listening to interviews with contemporary composers. Sampling, translation, processing, harmonics and dissonance relate so much to how I think about abstraction.” Pamela Jorden’s work allows for associations in an open field in both her making and our viewing, opening up possibilities for consideration and contemplation.