Colorful Gestures : Wassily Kandinsky, in his seminal book, "Concerning the Spiritual in Art," defines blue as a heavenly
color-a color siginifying contemplation and transcendence, in
which "the power of profound meaning is found." Yellow, on
the other hand, is defined as an earthy color that lacks
"profound meaning" but instead is associated with "madness,
with violent raving lunacy."

Suzan Woodruff , who quotes Kandinsky
in her artist's statement, has taken this
slice of the Modernist guru's color theory
to heart. Her elegant abstract paintings,
on view at William Turner Gallery, explore
the complicated and potentially profound
relationship between yellow and blue by
playing them against each other in loose,
watery compositions.

Because blue, the coolest of the colors,
has the quality of receding from the
viewer while yellow, the warmest has
the quality of advancing, the relation-
ship between them when paired exclusively is a poetic one;
a delicate balance of opposing tensions. Woodruff handles
this balance with a generally wise and unassuming delicacy
that leaves room for the sort of psychological associations
Kandinsky suggests.

Woodruff's approach is clearly instinctual and emotional
rather than mathematical. The paintings bear more relation
to the organic processes of nature than the formal mach-
inations of color theory, despite their self-consciously
limited palette. With the exception of a few torn paper
collages, which are somewhat muddier and less satisfying
than the rest of the work, each of the compositions is
oriented around a central circular or triangular form, and
several are stamped with the black outline of a butterfly.

Although, like the colors, these essentialist symbols,
prone to simplification or cliche, Woodruff invests them
with a genuine and convincing reverence. As a result,
each of these lovely paintings transforms what might
be simply a stylistic experiment into a concrete gesture
of faith.