Estes and Ledbetter artistic styles evolve

Don Estes' "Eleven" is oil-and-acrylic on canvas.

One doesn't expect to go into an exhibition of abstract paintings by Don Estes and be greeted by splashes of color, but in "Prosody," at David Lusk Gallery through Nov. 26, the artist reveals a radical transformation of his manner that includes far more color than he has employed in many years.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away at L Ross Gallery, Jeri Ledbetter continues to refine her technique and extend her reach into cryptic yet potent calligraphic gestures in "Passeggiata," through Nov. 29.

The paradoxes of abstract painting include these: That however random and spontaneous a mark or passage is, it must carry the weight of inevitability; and that wherever a empty space appears, wherever there is nothing, it must feel as if something is happening.

Jeri Ledbetter's "Impalcatura" is an oil on panel.

As Estes feels his way into a new style, and the shifts in method that such a change demands, we the viewers sense the struggle he goes through to accommodate a new vision of how he wants a picture to look. For the past decade or more, Estes has concentrated on large -- sometimes very large -- paintings structured in a format of strict horizontal strips expressed in the muted colors that an interior designer would call "desert": various beiges, sand-hue, ivory, cream, an unforgettable black line here and there.

In a show at David Lusk Gallery in 2006, the artist startled viewers by allowing hints of vivid coloration into his rigorous plan. In an exhibition in November 2009, Estes stuck to the horizontal construction, but several pictures were practically saturated with color.

Two years later, in "Prosody" -- the systemic study of metrical structure -- Estes offers something entirely different in a series of 16 oil-and-acrylic on canvas paintings, numbered and not titled, that are open, free and lyrical; where his previous work could have been described as epic and heroic, these new pieces are more intimate and eloquent. Ragged passages of pigment thinned to the point of stain form the central figures, which are highlighted, cut through, truncated, framed (and sometimes undermined) by splattery glops, dripped lines, road-like or river-like lines that lend a geographic tenor, and thick vertical or horizontal totems that jut from the pictures' edges. All of this simultaneous Cubist imagery is set against flat dimensionless space.

Often these pieces are exhilarating and quite lovely, yet just as often one feels a sense of tentativeness, of a searching on the part of the artist and a lack of finding the appropriate response in his functional or imaginative arsenal. The tension between the calmness of the stained, barely opaque figures at the center of each painting and the dense, flashy poles that rear up into the plane feels uncomfortably unresolved. Still, we have the privilege of watching an artist work through a tremendous transformation in manner and method that must be as wrenching for him as it is gratifying.

As Estes does in working both in large and small scales, Ledbetter offers oil-on-panel works in sizes that vary from a handy 18-by-20 inches to an ambitious 60-by-72 inches. The three pieces in that most expansive format -- "Impalcatura," "Resti" and "Portoercolano" -- mark the artist's bravura intentions, as she covers each plane from border to border with an energetic, enigmatic scrawl and layered fields of pigment that in their scraping and over-painting reveal the struggle of their own creation.

Ledbetter's most effective pieces are those that use to the greatest extent her tendency toward long, narrowly looping black calligraphic lines or sketchy, stuttering lines that veer up and down in a sort of rapid graphic transit of the unconscious. And, again, she is at her best with the paintings that most reveal that struggle, so that the artist's search for the balance between raw expression and compositional integrity resonates as a record of the traversal of doubts and fears. Such moments are indeed passeggiata -- Italian for walks or passages -- marking the road to authentic accomplishment.

Another paradox is that while Estes' recently developed style seems to work better in his smaller format (there's not so much empty space to worry about), Ledbetter works more confidently at a bigger scale; she needs room to keep her gestures true.

Don Estes, "Prosody"

At David Lusk Gallery, 4540 Poplar in Laurelwood, through Nov. 26. Call (901) 767-3800.

Jeri Ledbetter, "Passeggiata"

At L Ross Gallery, 5040 Sanderlin in Sanderlin Place, through Nov. 29. Call (901) 767-2200.

© 2011 Go Memphis. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.