Abigail Dudley (b. 1996) depicts aspects of the everyday awash in atmospheric color and suffused light. Her compositions depict a mosaic of interlocking forms where objects and figures shift in and out of soft focus. Dudley blurs images together, skews perspective, and adds amorphous painterly gestures, resulting in work that weaves in between abstraction and representation.

The works in this show introduce elements of the fantastic to Dudley’s observed surroundings. They retain her sensitive, personal quality, but with an added touch of the mythic. She writes:

In my paintings, layered constructions of interior spaces and still lifes act as portals to build a reality that is malleable. I’m interested in having highly rendered imagery and paper-thin memories exist within one image to bring a deeper level of looking. 

 Just like how certain flowers take on bright colors to mimic a poisonous plant to protect its vulnerability, I am interested in how heightened color can act as a veil to protect and conceal hidden stories in each painting. My paintings take time to fully mature. I aim to reach a balance between a fresh spontaneity to bring them to a conclusion while revealing traces of previous possibilities in the life of the paintings. I think about the proximity that comes with the complexion of each painting, how bright colors and sensitively rendered passages create a space that pushes against each other to test their strength and the strength of reality and memories. I’m interested in how the temperament of each painting demands the viewer to engage with the painting at different distances.

Abigail Dudley received her BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2021 and worked at Mount Gretna School of Art in the summers. While in the undergraduate program at PAFA, Dudley received the Raymond D. & Estelle Rubens Travel Scholarship for European Travel. Dudley’s work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions throughout the Northeast including in New York City, NY, Baltimore, MD, and Philadelphia, PA. SHFAP has shown her work in a solo show in 2023, Invention Observed, as well as in a group show in 2022. Her work was also featured in a group show at LaiSun Keane, curated by John Yau in 2023. Dudley is two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshield Grant, once in 2020 and again in 2022, and was the artist in residence at the Lois and Charles X. Carlson Landscape Residency in 2021.