Judy Ledgerwood

Judy Ledgerwood is a contemporary artist working in Sawyer, Michigan and Chicago. Over a career spanning four decades, she has challenged the male-dominated legacy of minimalist abstraction by engaging its formal language through a feminist lens. Drawing from both fine art and popular culture, Ledgerwood uses the visual vocabulary of concrete abstraction to create vivid, dynamic compositions that disrupt assumptions of neutrality in painting. Her work centers visual pleasure and engagement, often through the use of unapologetically feminine colors and forms. Using repetitive circular shapes and her signature quatrefoil pattern, Ledgerwood bends and relaxes the traditional grid by incorporating influences from the Pattern & Decoration movement, quilting, and textiles, merging formalist and feminist concerns in works that are both sensual and subversive.

Ledgerwood’s work has been exhibited widely, including in solo exhibitions at the Smart Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Renaissance Society in Chicago; Häusler Contemporary in Zurich, Munich, and Lustenau, Austria; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston; and Tracy Williams LTD, NYC. She has completed several prominent commissions, including paintings for the American Embassies in San Salvador, El Salvador and Vientiane, Laos; a large stained glass installation for the Bir Hakeim Paris Metro RATP Station, Paris, France; and site specific installations for the Graham Foundation, Art Institute of Chicago and Bloomberg in NYC. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the David Owsley Museum of Art, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana; the University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington; and Museum of Art and Design, NYC. She has received awards from the Driehaus Foundation, Artadia, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and Illinois Art Council. Ledgerwood is represented in numerous public collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago; The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Evanston, IL; Chicago Public Library; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Milwaukee Museum of Art; Oak Park Public Library, IL; and the Swiss Bank Collection, NY.