Jennifer Bartlett
United States, born 1941
Houses: Dots, Hatches, 1999
Color screenprint on paper
38 ¼ x 38 ¼ in.
Weatherspoon Art Museum. Gift of Charles Weinraub and Emily Kass in honor of Nancy Doll, 2019


Jennifer Bartlett’s artworks fuse conceptualism and painterly figuration. Here she depicts the rudimentary icon of a house—rectangle with a triangle atop—situated in a simple landscape. Bartlett analyzed and enlivened the rather mundane motif through mark-making and color variation. The colorful grid of pixilated dots and seemingly haphazardly arranged hatch marks activates the composition and transmits a dynamic, cheerful aura.

© Jennifer Bartlett. Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, and The Jennifer Bartlett 2013 Trust.

Larry Schwarm
United States, born 1944
Roiling Fire, eastern Lyon County, Kansas, 2005
C-print
38 x 39 in.
Weatherspoon Art Museum. Gift of Charles Weinraub and Emily Kass in honor of Nancy Doll, 2019Weatherspoon Art Museum. Gift of Charles Weinraub and Emily Kass in honor of Nancy Doll, 2019

Larry Schwarm photographs the ecological prairie fires of his native Kansas. Although the image depicts an actual landscape, Schwarm abstracted the spectacle into what becomes a study of light, space, and color.

© Larry W. Schwarm

Leigh Suggs
United States, born 1981
Oh, 2006
Collage on canvas
30 x 30 in.
Weatherspoon Art Museum. Gift of Charles Weinraub and Emily Kass in honor of Nancy Doll, 2019

Leigh Suggs’ work typically involves repetition. The artist focuses on a single technique or strategy—whether it is cutting, stitching, marking, or, as here, employing collage—until the composition is complete. As her laborious actions accumulate, abstract patterns form that suggest rhythms. Suggs says of her work: “Deceptively simple and minimalistic in content, my work asks the viewer to be patient and to contemplate what is happening. I explore movement, light, and translucency through the use of singular, pattern-producing gestures.”

© Leigh Suggs

Finding Meaning: The Power and Possibility of Abstraction, Weatherspoon Art Museum, installation photography by Martin W. Kane, University Communications, 2020.

Finding Meaning: The Power and Possibility of Abstraction, Weatherspoon Art Museum, installation photography by Martin W. Kane, University Communications, 2020.

Finding Meaning: The Power and Possibility of Abstraction, Weatherspoon Art Museum, installation photography by Martin W. Kane, University Communications, 2020.

Finding Meaning: The Power and Possibility of Abstraction, Weatherspoon Art Museum, installation photography by Martin W. Kane, University Communications, 2020.

Finding Meaning: The Power and Possibility of Abstraction, Weatherspoon Art Museum, installation photography by Martin W. Kane, University Communications, 2020.