Photo courtesy www.WisconsinVisualArtists.com
The Hudson Business Lounge and Cafe is a mixed place. Located in the Third Ward, it is designed as a combination of independent workspaces as well as a café-bar open to the public. They have been featuring the work of local artists on their walls as an alternative type of exhibition space. Currently, Virgi Driscoll is showing canvases that diverge from her usual practice into free-form abstract pictures.
Driscoll’s works, displayed under the collective title “Mindscapes,” are brightly pigmented arrangements that, as alluded to by their titles, relate to urban environments, interior psychology, or exist autonomously as formations of color and ambiguous shapes. This is a departure for Driscoll who has been established as a figurative painter, particularly in the field of portraiture. Weighty strokes and overlays of color are found throughout the pieces placed throughout the space. Interestingly, there is often an implication of line that defines amorphous shapes, as though a penchant for delineation remains even in the space of the mind.
Despite the nonrepresentational quality of the paintings, there is often an inclination toward control joined with an expressionist bent. Works like Inner Moving Patterns are built with negative space at the corners and become compressed by progressively smaller areas of defined color as they reach the center. The surface is broken up by patches of high-keyed color and rough touches of linear boundaries. To see these in conjunction with Driscoll’s self-portrait, also in the show, may come as a surprise. There, in passages of her clearly articulated face, strokes of red and green enliven the flesh, suggesting a predilection for an abstract process.
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The paintings are arranged throughout the café-bar and other workspaces at the Hudson. Like any similar situation, it’s an open question as to how they are perceived. Perhaps they are perused carefully during a moment of work-time respite, or provide a backdrop for the goings-on of the day. This is a curious situation as it occurs regularly in many places. So for the viewer, it is a reminder to look to your surroundings and see what you might find.
Mindscapes is on exhibit through October at the Hudson Business Lounge and Cafe, 310 E. Buffalo St. For more information, call 414-220-9460 or visit thehudson.org.
