
Alchemy of Light at Dolby Chadwick Gallery presents recent paintings by Gwen Hardie, in which a square canvas becomes an animated field of color that holds light and suggests three-dimensional presence. Rooted in decades of close observation, Hardie traces a path from figuration to abstraction, attending to how minute variations in color and value generate presence. Each canvas establishes a subtle instability: the center may advance, then recede; the surrounding field reads as atmosphere, then as structure, building a luminous film whose radiance emerges from the interaction of warm and cool, muted and saturated hues.