North Meets South
Carrie McGee and Jeffrey Cortland Jones

By Chase Martin

At first glance, Jeffrey Cortland Jones’ paintings are so quiet they are almost silent. Pale and intimately scaled, they seem practically empty. Most of his pieces are not much larger than a computer screen, and their smooth, layered surfaces evoke the cells of a spreadsheet, or windows floating in an Internet browser.

This is not to say Jones’ work is sterile. Some of these pieces resemble painted-over graffiti, each stratum peeking out from beneath the layer above it, creating overlapping perspectives that are often as elegant as haiku. Jones’ spare aesthetic may recall the backlit glow of a digital interface, but his paintings invite close looking, and he rewards the viewer with subtle touches of luminous blues, greens, and oranges. The textures in these pieces are lurking on the edges, waiting around corners.

Unfortunately, Jones’ understated paintings are nearly drowned out by Carrie McGee’s wall hangings. McGee’s much larger pieces are constructed from panels of resin, tinted with the rich tones of rust and oil. She has suspended these panels from wires, arranging them into frameworks that are attractive, but not particularly compelling. This is wallpaper—the sort of blandly decorative abstraction that belongs in an office park. Interspersed among Jones’ reserved work, they feel jarring and exaggerated.

North Meets South is on view at Green Building Gallery October 25 – December 6, 2013.