Jacob Breeden. Sculpture, Design, Paintings

The show is titled "The Natural Consistency of Chaos."

All the paintings are abstract, and boldness - of shapes, and especially colors - is their keynote. Boldness also goes for the size of six works more than five feet square.

That big square format brings two things to mind: boxing and wrestling "rings," and the statement made in the early days of Abstract Expressionism, that the canvas is "an arena in which to act" rather than a space for creating a representation.

Breeden acts on his canvases in response to intuitive impulses. His designs develop from an initial impulse - for a certain sort of form, or color - to the next, and the next. The "consistency" is often a matter of contrast; it's always a matter of how energies projected by shapes, colors and their formats call for something more to interact with.

In "Chance Encounter," firm, black geometric frame-like shapes interact with bright reds and loosely brushed effects. It has a feel of 3-D spaciousness, whereas in "Strident," forms are more closely compacted. To my eyes, "Strident" has a sort of nuclear energy core above and to the left of its center.

Breeden composes his works with the hope that each viewer might take away something different. Meeting with him in his gallery, he explained, " try to keep references - associations - out of it. It's got to feel spontaneously right. The moment I find myself questioning whether I should do this, or that, I go to another painting."

When working, Breeden usually has a number of canvases under way at the same time. Other innovative approaches include using unusual implements for spreading paint, special mixes of acrylic hues for maximum brightness, practicing splatters and other spontaneous effects before using them on a canvas, and creating large-size canvas "boards" that project out in front of a wall.

Breeden's spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting has particular appeal to those who value the unexpected when they're responding to art.

Hunter Ingalls