{"id":58772,"date":"2021-07-01T21:55:17","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T03:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=58772"},"modified":"2021-07-03T22:28:36","modified_gmt":"2021-07-04T04:28:36","slug":"hadley-rampton-paints-her-way-through-the-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/hadley-rampton-paints-her-way-through-the-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Hadley Rampton Paints Her Way Through the Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Bluebird Patriarch,” oil on masonite, 16 x 20 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

\nHadley Rampton, who paints en plein air accompanied by her dog, Phoebe, primarily in the Rocky Mountain wilderness she loves but also (sans dog) in town squares and picturesque alleyways around the world, learned a couple new lessons about (and from) Utah\u2019s scenic backcountry during the Pandemic: that a little abstraction adds a deft touch to an otherwise perfectly painterly vista drenched in realism; that she can loosen up a tad without losing control \u2013 something she says she has worked toward much of her professional life (probably not, however, since the age of 9 \u2014 which is when this artist began formal art studies. But, certainly, for some 22 years of setting up easel, canvas, palette and paints out of doors.) She has gotten bold and authoritative with her palette knife \u2013 digging deep with a surprising energy and focus that seems more an immediate response to what lies before her than a considered mark-making technique. It serves her well. She says when she paints rocks on Masonite and applies her knife it feels like she is sculpting them with clay.<\/h4>\n
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“Blaze,” oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

There is an electricity to this current body of work of Rampton\u2019s now at Phillips Gallery (paired with Edward Bateman’s reimagining of Utah mountains). \u00a0It\u2019s deep and fresh with very little that comes across as \u201cdone before\u201d although the subject matter has necessarily remained much the same. (Someone commented on the similarity of her colors, but her palette surely is limited by what she can carry; also, perhaps, by choice.)<\/h4>\n

Her work has lost a bit of the mannerly, \u201cjust-so\u201d quality that distinguished it; it has become less cluttered, simplified in subject matter as well as brushstroke. Her near-perfect painting of two aspens (hanging behind the desk), or of three of the trees in the east gallery instead of a grove of them helps prove the point. They sparkle. This brilliant artist is finding her path, giving authority to her voice, letting her emotions, rather than her brain take the lead. (Rampton once told our late critic Ehren Clark that she couldn\u2019t decide whether to \u201cgive authority\u201d to realism or to abstraction in her work \u2013 that \u201ctheir juxtaposition was intriguing\u201d to her.) These days she seems to be putting less thought and more emotion into her process. She doesn\u2019t stress over tools and blending strokes (or not), but rather just lays it out in a considered manner that trusts her considerable training and fine instincts to get it right.<\/h4>\n
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“Clouded Colors, Zion,” oil on masonite, 12 x 12 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Rampton\u2019s strong 12 x 16\u201d travel sketches, done mostly on-site in watercolor and ink in locales around the world have always proved intriguing. Because Rampton has a fascination with history and a curiosity about and sympathy for our less-fortunate global neighbors, her focus is on such places as Trinidad, Cuba; Zanzibar; Slovenia; Firenze; Morocco; Santiago; Kosovo; Macedonia; Armenia; Budapest and elsewhere and the people who inhabit them (she does such telling figure work). Some of these were painted with a difference, though. When Phillips Gallery, where Rampton works as well as sells her work, shut down during the Covid crisis, the artist went into something between a tailspin and depression. Freeze Creek in Emigration Canyon has always been her refuge and painting it was therapy, she says. \u201cIt gave me purpose,\u201d she explains. That led to the work in this show on Masonite. Come winter, when she couldn\u2019t get to the mountains, and couldn\u2019t journey outside the country either, she turned to her journals and photos covering 20 years of travels. \u201cIt was really moving because I not only went back to the moments of time in these pieces [hanging on the gallery wall] but to where I was in my life.\u201d She talks about arriving in Rome in 2010 after helping a friend with a school project in Tanzania, \u201cat the time, the poorest place in the world\u201d and Rampton\u2019s first experience in a Third World country. She found herself reflecting on that experience, on Western privilege and wealth, and believes other people gave thought to these things as well during the global Pandemic.<\/h4>\n
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“Despu\u00e9s de la Lluvia, Trinidad, Cuba,” w<\/b>atercolor & ink, 12 x 16 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Hadley Rampton, Phillips Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through July 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hadley Rampton, who paints en plein air accompanied by her dog, Phoebe, primarily in the Rocky Mountain wilderness she loves but also (sans dog) in town squares and picturesque alleyways around the world, learned a couple new lessons about (and from) Utah\u2019s scenic backcountry during the Pandemic: that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":58776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[673,157],"class_list":["post-58772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-hadley-rampton","tag-phillips-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/HARA563_BluebirdPatriarchs.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 12:09:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58779,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58772\/revisions\/58779"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}