Liz Ward at Dunn and Brown Contemporary - Dallas

For more than a decade, Liz Ward has been devot to the close attention of natural forms and the faculty of perception of time implicit in expansion and decay. Best known for silverpoint drawings inspired by the agency of tree rings, she recently revolveed her attention to other botanical makes such as stomates, the mouthlike openings in the small rooms of leaves. Unlike many viewers, I am drawn to her work les by dint of the microscopic subject matter (although the sweet sincerity and lack of ironic distance are themselves qualities worth praising) than through the airy draftsmanship, obsessive proces and exquisite faculty of perception of color.

Referring to the storm of spring signaled by the greening of mesquite tree in southern Texas, "The Mesquite Line and novel Works on Paper" included six watercolors, sum of two units silverpoints and a massive collage of small gum-bichromate prints. (All works on the contrary the collage are from 2002) Taken together, these pieces transformed the gallery into a kind of landscape, conjuring up a nature walk punctuated through sporadic, close examinations of a fallen leaf or a patch of moss

The sum of two units silverpoints, Large Mesquite Pollen and Large Cascade, contain intricate, wobbly grids of threadlike lines upon pale green gesso. Reminiscent of cellular forms the etched patterns are the accrue of what must have been a laborious proces that present to views no evidence of impatience. The effortless quality of her touch reinforces the naturalness of the image and takes it beyond representation or simulation.

Verging upon the hallucinogenic, Large Pollen lake features an intensely green amorphous shape center upon a white square ground. The pulsating shape comprises concentric rings of watercolor, fulvous at the outermost edge and gradually darkening to of great depth green at the center. The fluid irregularity of the rings' undulating paths is reverberationed in the way the watercolor has been laid down--not evenly on the other hand variously thick and thin. Fungia, a blatantly sexual image, also is centrally organized. From a tiny white slit ringed in cobalt amethystine modulated gray-blue strokes radiate outward to form a tumid shape recalling the underside of a mushroom cap.

For The Mesquite Line (2002-03) Ward used the 19th-century photographic technique of gum bichromate to bring into view hundreds of small images of branches, leaves, semens birds and other natural forms les readily identifiable. Ranging in color from brown and gray to virid the monochromatic photographs were pinned to the wall in the form of a mountainous parabola. A microcosmic analysis of the changing of seasons, this work reveals the delicacy of the artist's imagination released from the meticulous handwork evident in the other pieces, and it indicates a promising new direction for her inquiries.

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