"Breaking Day," on view June 30th - July 22nd, 2023, is an exhibition of new works by Max Cole, painted since her move back to New Mexico.
With their subtlety and quiet beauty, Cole's paintings, despite their deceptive simplicity, present a continuous unfolding. There is a movement between each band of color, each fine line, which the eye follows – focusing first in, then out, detail and then whole, back to detail. And as the viewer eases into a relationship with the painting, sinks into sympathy with it, the quality of attention begins to shift, deepening, softening, expanding.
What seems to lie beyond the sum of the paintings’ parts is a quality of presence, imparted during their creation. The paradoxical state of soft and sharp focus, of vivid awareness which is clear in Max Cole’s creation of the pieces is what, slowly but surely, opens up a possibility of that state within the viewer.
