Crimson Snow Pencil & acrylic on paper 10 X 12 in.		Rough Seas Charcoal, pencil & acrylic on paper 26 1/2 X 29 in.

On Saturday, May 1, 2004 from 6-8 pm, William Campbell Contemporary Art will open an exhibition of new works by Judy Youngblood. Youngblood's most recent body of work explores 'weather' through her mixed-media works.

Weather is an internal as well as an external phenomenon. While one’s interior climate does not always reflect the seasons of one’s environment, there are resonances and echoes between them that constantly adjust one’s balance. Judy Youngblood’s art is a continuous dance with these dynamics.

Youngblood’s work is always about nature. She shapes and stylizes wind and rain and clouds to create the most universal and thought-provoking symbolism. A ceremonial pillar of rain falls from a round – perhaps even mushroom-shaped – cloud and forms an abstract monument, but there is no inherent drama in the image. There is only a clear and vivid statement. Its presence is edgy, yet its surface is velvety and serene.

Youngblood is a printmaker as well as a painter, and the way she works is closely linked to her background in printmaking with a focus on etching. As a Fulbright Scholar, she studied in Paris with Stanley William Hayter. She headed the printmaking department at the University of North Texas for years. "One thing I like a great deal about working in print," she says, "is that it is so slow and time consuming. Many of my thought processes occur during the time I spend working on the plate, and not just before."

Youngblood’s painting, drawing, and mixed media techniques are much the same. "It’s all about laying down images and changing them, and the way those changes interact in the layering process. If you look closely, you can see underneath where the preliminary drawings have changed or gone away. The whole thing about having layers there is very important. It is exactly like the inner life of everything – people, weather, time. It all moves. My work is about change and transformation, about which elements can be controlled and which ones cannot."

Repetition also plays a prominent part in Youngblood’s art. Leaves, raindrops, and human figures, each slightly different, cluster and disperse much like the organic patterns of nature or the workings of the psyche. The possibilities of interpretation are endless. The unifying element, always, is Youngblood's immaculate craftsmanship.

Her work has been exhibited in solo shows at numerous galleries and university art museums, as well as the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont. It has been selected for juried exhibitions worldwide. Youngblood’s work hangs in the permanent collections of the Boston, Houston, and San Francisco Museums of Fine Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Museum of Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, and the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Corporate collections include Texas Instruments and Exxon.