Sensing Meaning, Abstract Painting

9.27.25—8.30.26

This exhibition brings together abstract paintings from multiple artists with works dating from the recent past to as early as 1945. Sensing Meaning, Abstract Painting showcases the diverse approaches to abstraction that artists have adopted including Joan Mitchell’s gestural expressionism, Nancy Haynes’s minimalist sensibility, Pablo Picasso’s biomorphic forms, and Sarah Morris’s geometric compositions to name a few.

The artists included in Sensing Meaning, Abstract Painting create poetic interpretations through their use of space, color, line, and form, conveying feelings or capturing the experience of particular moments in time and place through abstract gestures. Some of the artists use these elements to investigate painting’s history or to play with its fundamental nature and to question and experiment with the medium’s two-dimensional constraints. The exhibition includes examples that employ nontraditional materials—or that do not incorporate paint at all—as well as works that are typically considered sculptures.

Although each of these artists are specifically drawn to abstraction to represent their individual ideas, they recognize that abstraction—because of its avoidance of representational imagery—invites personal interpretation perhaps more than any other artistic approach. In fact, abstraction holds utopian appeal for many of these artists, who view it as universally accessible and meaningful. Sensing Meaning encourages you to draw on your visual perception and intuition to shape your understanding and experience of abstract art and all that it can encompass.  

The public is invited to attend the exhibition opening on Saturday, September 27, 2025. An exhibition walkthrough led by Elyse A. Gonzales, Director of Ruby City is scheduled from 2-3PM followed by a reception in the sculpture garden from 3-5PM. This event is free and open to the public.