Tilton Gallery is pleased to present early paintings by American abstract artist Rebecca Purdum. This presentation will introduce her work in London for the first time. It will highlight works Purdum produced while living in New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before moving to Vermont in the 2000s. This period saw Purdum’s first solo exhibition at Tilton Gallery in 1986 and her inclusion in the Whitney Biennial in 1991.

These paintings highlight her unique approach. While at Saint Martin’s School of Art, Purdum eschewed the traditional brush in favor of a more immediate method: her fingers. Painting with gloved hands allowed her ten simultaneous brushes and resulted in layered paintings of contemplative depth and immediacy of surface. Her compositions, often likened to those of artists J.M.W. Turner and Mark Rothko by John Russell and other critics, emanate an inner light from within their gently varied, often lush colors.

Purdum’s timeless paintings reward slow and careful viewing. Her works do what the best of abstract – or any – art should do: give one that unnamable depth of experience that silently contributes to one’s understanding of the world.