During a studio visit in grad school, I was told, “You cannot rely on intuition.” I’m sure many other artists have heard similar things. As artists, we are often guided towards research, content, and the intended meaning of our work over insight, spirituality, or feeling. It is part of an ongoing myth that artists should have precise reasons for their every decision, and that intuition, alchemy, magic, and other unexplainable forces are less important. Liz Rodda challenges this idea in her solo exhibition, The Hand is Pinker Than the Eye, at Jonathan Hopson Gallery. She explores deliberate and incidental mark-making within gestural paintings and salvaged foam fragments to dismantle notions of hierarchy across media, process, and genre.
Installation view of “The Hand is Pinker Than the Eye”
Like many artists, Rodda uses Pink Panther Foamular in the studio. This ordinary construction material is durable and light, making it ideal for storing, transporting, and packing art. Despite its surprising strength, pink foam board is susceptible to impressions, scratches, and other incidental marks. The surface archives a history of its use, revealing flaws and imperfections. Rodda presents these marred surfaces in close proximity to her paintings, creating a visual connection that is challenging and poetic, with a sense of humor.
Rodda’s paintings are intimate, meditative, and layered. They feel arrived at, in a way that comes only from careful looking. It’s as if Rodda lets the paintings reveal themselves to her, rather than assert any kind of predetermination. I sense an ebb and flow between intuitive or automatic and deliberate or conscious mark-making. The paintings are washy, scratchy, slow, strange, sophisticated, and casual. Together with the reclaimed foam fragments, I am aware of a shared visual vocabulary between the works. Both lean into accidental and incidental mark-making, but I don’t believe they are equivalent. My conviction that the paintings are far more important and valuable reveals my own bias. Perhaps that is the point.
Jonathan Hopson noticed my interest in a row of shells installed along the edge of a foam fragment, during our walkthrough of the exhibition. He shared with me that his two-year-old daughter Aurora had rearranged them after the initial installation. As it turned out, Rodda preferred Aurora’s intervention, and let it be. This moment underscores the anti-hierarchical nature of Rodda’s practice. Where predominant high art narratives would have us believe that there is some lofty reason for this exact row of shells, it is refreshing to know that a curious toddler had a small hand in their arrangement. Many people want to know how artists make their work and where they get their ideas but often recoil when the answer is mundane or unglamorous. We expect extraordinary things from artists and can fail to recognize they often come from relatively ordinary moments.
Liz Rodda, “untitled,” (detail), 2024, oil on foamular
Despite all efforts to democratize the visual arts and do away with age-old hierarchies, painting remains one of the most revered, collected, and valued forms of art. Decentering this dominant form of art requires each of us to consider our own biases, which I am reminded of with this exhibition. It feels impossible to create an anti-hierarchical painting exhibition, yet Liz Rodda has done just that.
Liz Rodda’s The Hand is Pinker Than the Eye, is on view at Jonathan Hopson Gallery through November 24.
