Art Project 605, a gallery in downtown Detroit Lakes, announces its summer show, which opens on July 12, 2024. The opening reception is on July 11 from 6-8 PM. Jennie Ward: Love Song in the Chaos presents recent oil paintings and works on paper by the Minnesota artist. Ward’s abstract paintings exalt in her surrounding terrain of field, lake, and sky. No space is forgotten on Ward’s canvases. Painted black lines mark patches that are energetically charged with vibrant colors applied with expressive brushwork. Some of the compositions are two-dimensional, flattened yet recognizable landscapes, while others pull the eye into three-dimensional spaces. Evocative and open to interpretation, these new paintings leave room for viewers to wonder and respond based on their own ideas and experiences.

Abstract painting “demands that you know how to draw well,” the artist Wassily Kandinsky observed. Drawing is foundational to Ward’s practice, and visitors to the gallery can view a selection of the artist’s charcoal, pencil, and watercolor works on paper, and make connections between her representational and abstract artwork.

Jennie Ward (née Bowers) is a graduate of Detroit Lakes High School and Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where she was awarded the Miles and Shirley Fiterman Full Tuition Scholarship and received the Gamblin Paint Award. Her paintings have been shown in the Minneapolis Skyway, the St. Paul Capital, and in shows at the Ecce Gallery of Fargo. Ward was an Artist-in-Residence at the Vermont Studio Center and has been profiled by Design & Living Magazine. Her large-scale painting, “Coming Home,” is in the collection of the Center for Special Surgery in West Fargo, ND. Ward lives on a farm in Lake Park, MN, with her husband—an art teacher—and their two children.