Leigh Ann Hallberg: Phenoms

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In her Phenoms series, artist Leigh Ann Hallberg creates large-scale abstract paintings inspired by her journey through local landscapes, including the Reynolda landscape. Hallberg, who has taught painting at Wake Forest University since 1999, chose a square format for the series, which she says leaves the viewer’s understanding of the work open—the abstract painting is neither portrait nor landscape. Instead, it is a pretend space in which the viewer is able to reconsider and reimagine their experience of nature through the works.

Hallberg employs a variety of color palettes and metal leaf. She uses the medium of watercolor in order to pull out its inherent qualities of flow, dripping, and puddling, which she considers nearly indexical with substances of the natural world: water, soil, and vegetation. In fact, most of the watercolor pigments are derived from materials found in the earth. The metal leaf invokes the idea of time and its passage, as the viewer’s perception of the leaf (reflective, a void, a light) shifts over the course of the day, under various lighting conditions and viewing angles.

The works in the Phenoms series represent Hallberg’s felt resonance with and sense of wonder about the natural world.