Why Paint?

Four Chicago-based artists, Judy Ledgerwood, Jim Lutes, Kay Rosen and Kevin Wolff, propose a variety of answers, exits and witty retorts to the often asked, and purportedly existential, question: why paint? Why not? Between the large-scale romantic landscapes of Ledgerwood, Rosen's carefully crafted word games, Lutes' calligraphic jumbles and the wily appendages of Wolff, painting has rarely seemed as varied and relevant. Art critic David Pagel looks at the crises in painting within the pretext of Modernism's decline and the ascension of Postmodernist pluralism and search for narratives. Pagel asserts that the question of how and why to paint always arrives either too late or too early, ever missing the crime in action, but there to reap the benefits of the deed.