Behind imposing glass doors, just beyond the Currier Museum of Art’s antechamber, one is confronted with the culmination of a career. Eight large paintings of oil on canvas by the audacious painter Wendy Edwards hang as the first works museumgoers will see this winter and spring, less a primer of what lies ahead in the near-century old museum’s other galleries, than a reminder that challenging work is still being made, and that the work continues to evolve as the artist ages.
Produced over the past decade, the paintings in “Flourishing,” which runs through April 5, will be the inaugural show in the Currier’s new Concourse Gallery space. Each deal in Edwards’ recurring subjects, the human body and florals, in their own unique ways. Her ability to translate aspects of the natural world into the abstract is a skill honed over a 40-year career; and if the works presented offer less context for the viewer than some of her earlier pieces, the meaning is never lost, only intensified.
“Vincent’s Slips” is Edwards’ homage to Vincent Van Gogh’s 1890 picture “Roses.” Van Gogh’s work is a play of greens, blues and pinks with the roses bursting out of a vase too small to hold the unwieldyblooms. Edwards keeps the color palette, but does away with all but the leaves, petals and one gorgeous flower cascading down the canvas.