The Joker is Wild 2001

Valerie Jaudon made "The Joker is Wild," and I see a network of yellow shapes dancing on a red-orange grid. The way the shapes repeat and interlock feels like a visual puzzle, a code maybe, or a set of instructions. I can imagine Valerie at work in her studio, carefully placing each shape, stepping back, adjusting, and repeating. I bet she was thinking about the history of ornament, maybe the way patterns like this have been used in architecture or textiles. There's a subtle tension, a push and pull between order and chaos. I love how the shapes are not quite symmetrical, not quite perfect. You see this in the work of other painters who are fascinated by pattern, like Frank Stella or even some of the Gee's Bend quilters. It's like they are having a conversation across time, riffing off one another's ideas. Painting is like that, an ongoing exchange, a game of visual tag.