ARDEN + WHITE is pleased to announce a solo exhibition with roster artist Gwen Hardie. Hardie is known for her ability to capture the subtle shifts and nuances of color under varying light conditions. Her meticulous technique involves layering and blending colors to create soft transitions and luminous surfaces, making each piece a study of the ethereal qualities of light.
In this exhibition, Hardie’s works reveal color expressions between warmth and vitality, serenity and introspection. Through her use of color, Hardie explores the dimensions found within the chromatic spectrum, demonstrating how light can transform and animate the visual field. Her paintings often hover between abstraction and representation, drawing viewers into a contemplative space where the boundaries of color and form are fluid and ever-changing.
Cas Friese, gallerist and founder of Arden + White Gallery on the show:
“There are some artists whose work resonates so profoundly that you sense they will leave an indelible mark on the art world. From the first time I encountered Gwen Hardie’s work, I knew she was one of these artists. Her paintings draw viewers into an otherworldly experience—a space where the sublime feels palpable and within reach.
Throughout her career, Hardie has explored light, shadow, and color with meticulous care, evolving her approach in connected yet progressive ways. Educated at Edinburgh College of Art and later mentored by Georg Baselitz through the DAAD Art Scholarship in Berlin-West, Hardie’s practice is rooted in the painterly and colorist traditions of 20th-century European art. Over 35 years, she has developed a disciplined approach that continues to refine her unique visual language.
In the last decade, Hardie’s work has evolved into a distilled minimalism, focusing on nuanced color shifts within a square format. These works, while seemingly simple, resonate with energy and quiet complexity, encouraging viewers to slow down and engage deeply with the subtleties of the visual field. Her limited palette, often comprising just two or three colors, heightens the effect, making each tonal shift feel intentional and profound. By concentrating on the essentials, Hardie’s pieces communicate depth and emotion through simplicity, transforming light and color into her primary subjects.
Hardie’s mastery of chromatic nuance allows each painting to appear differently depending on the light that strikes it, a subtle reminder of perception’s subjectivity. Her work brings to mind artists like Mark Rothko, Josef Albers, and James Turrell, whose minimalist approaches evoke a sense of order and boundless space. Yet, Hardie maintains a fluid relationship between abstraction and form, grounding her work in the physical world while inviting viewers to experience it anew, as if light, life, and energy itself were the subject.
In recent years, Hardie’s exploration of shadow and light has deepened, focusing on how light transforms surfaces and affects perception. Her canvases serve as stages for light’s dynamic interplay—revealing and concealing, reflecting and absorbing, brightening and dimming. This exploration aligns her work with minimalist traditions while allowing her to approach light with a unique sensitivity, producing pieces that feel both grounded and transcendent.
Her latest exhibition, “Under a Deep Orange Sun and a Pale Blue Moon,” explores the full chromatic range of light indirectly. Through color and tone, she captures the fleeting radiance and warmth of the sun, the coolness and soft diffusion of moonlight, and the play of shadows—inviting viewers to experience the ephemeral beauty of these moments rather than seeing them represented literally. This atmospheric use of color evokes a sense of time and place that is universally familiar yet open to individual interpretation.
The exhibit presents vertical and horizontal sequences of individual paintings, each exploring gradient transitions within a color field. These sequences do not follow an expected order; instead, they emphasize the nuanced relationships among hues and highlight the dynamic movement in their subtle differences. As visitors enter, they encounter cool, moonlike tones—a new addition to Hardie’s investigation of color in this series—that gradually transition into warm hues deeper within the gallery, creating an immersive journey through color and light.
Through her art, Hardie continues to push the boundaries of perception, creating paintings that are as much about seeing as they are about being seen—a quiet mastery that invites us to look, reflect, and find beauty in the subtle energy of life, light, and color.”
© Text and Photo courtesy of ARDEN + WHITE GALLERY
