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By ROBIN PURNELL
Rappahannock Nef* Contributing Writer
This large collection of paintings and drawings by local artist June Jordan is a testament to her dedication and hard work. Her self discipline and adventuresome explorations of her materials to reach her visual goals is something I have always admired in her work.
The current show at The Middle Street Gallery consists of bold, colorful landscapes, portraits and figure studies, the majority of which are pastels. June handles this difficult medium with confident skill and an energetic technique. There are over 30 pieces to gaze at and I have decided to concentrate my remarks to a few pieces that 1 particularly respond to. One of my favorites is the enigmatic painting entitled “Wedding Slippers.” Picture a young, dark haired woman dressed in a simple, crisp white wedding gown sitting cross-legged on an industrial strength folding table in what appears to me to be a high school gymnasium. On the floor sits a pair of empty, brilliant red slippers. The woman has a sardonic grin on her pretty face and 1 wonder “What’s going on here?” This painting has a narrative quality that I find so very intriguing. June’s sense of composition is at its best here and I can tell from her work how much she loves the challenges of composition. In this painting June has managed to force the cool colors to recede, a neat trick to be appreciated by all colorists.
Another fine painting is “Tara” — a bold compositional statement in black, rust, warm and cool grays with a daring slash of red. This strong portrait of a woman in black ensconced on a couch with her arms spread akimbo is a study of the abstract elements of space, color, volume and composition. I love the daring band of red behind the subject’s head and the expert handling of proportions of the human form.
“Midsummer Afternoon” is perhaps the boldest landscape of the two
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