Point Gallery: Jennifer Davey: What You Believe Is What You See

An ambitious painting solo at Point Gallery, Jennifer Davey: What You Believe Is What You See, features a nice selection of recent abstract paintings by Jennifer Davey, a Loveland-based artist. Davey’s style references classic modernism, in particular abstract expressionism and color-field abstraction. Most of these pieces sport wide swaths of...

By Michael Paglia

September 8, 2016

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An ambitious painting solo at Point Gallery, Jennifer Davey: What You Believe Is What You See, features a nice selection of recent abstract paintings by Jennifer Davey, a Loveland-based artist.

Davey’s style references classic modernism — in particular, abstract expressionism and color-field abstraction. Most of these pieces sport wide swaths of paint applied horizontally and vertically, creating intersecting bars of color that alternately reveal or obscure the painted layers she’s done below. Davey also incorporates scribbled automatist lines and spells out words across the picture plane with stenciled letters. Many of the works rely on pentimenti, the illusionary “ghosts” of under-painted passages showing through to the surface; some of this semi-hidden imagery suggests representational subjects like buildings or landscapes. But when when you look closer, it’s apparent that the forms Davey creates are non-objective — in spite of the fact that she has written that, as a Colorado native, the Western scenery informs her work.

As is always the case at Point, the exhibit has been well laid out by gallery co-directors Frank Martinez and Michael Vacchiano. The show runs through September 30 at Point, 765 Santa Fe Drive. For more information, call 720-254-0467 or go to pointgallerydenver.com.

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Michael Paglia is an art historian and writer whose columns have appeared in Westword since 1995; his essays on the visual arts have also been published in national periodicals including Art News, Architecture, Art Ltd., Modernism, Art & Auction and Sculpture Magazine. He taught art history at the University of Colorado Denver.

Contact: Michael Paglia