Intricate details build into expansive compositions in the patterned abstractions of “Epicenter,” Pazo Fine Art’s first show at its new second location. The exhibition features the stylistically akin work of Baltimore painter Sue Crawford and two New York artists, Elise Ferguson and Richard Tinkler.
Crawford’s looping forms suggest natural phenomena, whether sound waves, sand dunes, or animal skins and shells. (Three of them are in a series titled “Testudo,” Latin for “tortoise.”) Dense and layered, the paintings are dominated by pinks and browns, with occasional interjections of blue. While the interlocking forms sometimes resemble the decorative motifs of textiles or pottery, they can also achieve the sweep of landscapes.
Ferguson's forms are much more regular and geometric, and usually executed in a single color. Banks of parallel, closely spaced straight lines curve into rounded sections, giving an effect that appears almost typographical. The artist makes her designs with pigmented plaster on paper, and their apparent precision lessens upon close inspection: The lines are crisp, but their edges are rough. Ferguson sometimes adds accents in a second hue, but most often line and color register as aspects of the same implacable whole.