Intelligent, subdued spiritual feel in The Blue of Distance, show of Madeline Rupard, Drew Rane at Material art gallery

For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go: Rebecca Solnit

Virtually every color has an associated, broadly familiar archetype. Blue is a notable exception. Some would assert that it is the archetype for the skies and oceans.  Blue can be transcendental, unfathomable and infinite, but also it can signify an unfillable void, a strong longing and yearning fueled by nostalgia or even emptiness of sensitivity. 

In his marvelous 1912 book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky called blue the  “the typical heavenly colour,” a concept that already was anchored in deep cultural roots. Kandinsky said of blue, “the ultimate feeling it creates is one of rest. When it sinks almost to black, it echoes a grief that is hardly human.” 

In Orthodox Church iconography, a disciplined practice of theological art, blue was welcomed for its background contrast with the depicted figures. Thus, blue was seen as practical but also as mystical and noble. 

The French painter Yves Klein even patented a variant of luminescent ultramarine blue, which he used extensively in his all-blue canvases. Klein reportedly said, “at first there is nothing, then there is a profound nothingness, after that a blue profundity.”

Rebecca Solnit’s meditation — “blue at the far edge of what can be seen” — became the conceptual anchor for The Blue of Distance, a two-person exhibition by artists Madeline Rupard and Drew Rane, which continues this week at the Material art gallery (2970 South West Temple)

The contrasts are elegantly articulated in the intelligently subdued spiritual feel of this exhibition. Both artists direct the viewer toward the horizon in as compelling ways as Klein’s blue canvases encouraged. Rupard’s quintessentially American landscapes eventually meet the skies, an exquisite manifestation of the opening verse in America the Beautiful. In paintings created in a flyover perspective, Rane gives us similarly quintessentially intimate portrayals in layers that invite us to contemplate blue in its exceptional range of emotions, sensitivities and spiritual grounding. 

Anyone who has gazed out a plane cabin window mid-flight will immediately connect with the sensation we see in these paintings by Rane, just as anyone who has driven through the suburban valleys along the Wasatch Front flanked by mountains on either side or through the Great Plains, will connect with the imagery captured in Rupard’s paintings. 

“Blue is the only color in the English language that is also a feeling,” Rupard wrote in an artist statement for the show. “‘I’m feeling blue,’ a loved one says, and you know it’s time to listen. Blue is twilight, it’s water and sky, it’s atmosphere and distance. Blue is the color of one of my earliest memories, in a warehouse parking lot in the morning with my dad, picking up a furniture order in Maryland. Blue is the strongest part of that memory that remains, a deep dark blue sky. The color evokes a pang, the memory of being small and sleepy and being in the car with him. Blue is memory, blue is time.”

Viewers will pick up readily on the counterpoint, with Rane’s hazy veils and with Rupard’s sharp rendering in the foreground of a painting but with blue’s ubiquitous presence in the distance. Rupard directs us to imagine beyond the horizon while Rane takes us there where the view is transformed, but still he respects the inherent ambiguity that can only be resolved through focused profound contemplation of it. 

In an interview for The Utah Review, Rane said that when they were hanging their works for the show, they were both struck by the similarities in ideas that became apparent with the paintings being shown in the common space. “We both felt how each of the different components together produced a unified vision of the landscapes in Utah and throughout America.” Rupard and Rane knew of each other’s work and often moved about in the same circles of peers and colleagues, but they never really crossed paths that would lead them to this joint show. 

Once the show was curated by Material co-owners Jorge Rojas and Colour Maisch, Rupard said, ”It made complete sense to put our work together as it became enough in how different and overlapping our paintings were.” Likewise, “in our work, there are these connective tissues that are on the same page, but also they distinctly stand on their own,” Rane said.

Both artists talked about the benefits of collaborating on a joint exhibition. Intrigued by Rane’s gestural marks in his paintings, Rupard said she might be a little more loose with her marks in future paintings. Rane mentioned that he is thinking about more colors being incorporated into his palette, as evidenced in Rupard’s paintings. Certainly, artists do not work in a vacuum and the show underscores how flowing with the vibes of the zeitgeist and an open spirit can overcome the occasional sense of design or creative fatigue that every artist eventually experiences at one time or another. A bonus insight comes from Rupard who mentioned how music has guided her in conceiving the atmospheric imagery in her paintings. Among the inspirations is Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports, a 1979 studio Blum that defined the ambient music genre. He subsequently released three other ambient albums (The Plateaux of Mirror, Day of Radiance and On Land).

Rupard was born in Provo, Utah, raised in Maryland and Georgia, and moved back recently to Utah from New York, her home of five years. A master’s degree alumna from Pratt Institute, she is assistant professor of painting at Brigham Young University. Last year, she published her first book consisting of paintings and text Passages with Slow Worm Press and participated in the I Never Read Art Book Fair, Art Basel 2025. Her work has also appeared in Booooooom, New American Paintings, and at Lorin Gallery in Los Angeles, Black Paper Gallery in Somerset, UK, and Room 57 Gallery in New York. 

Based in New York City, Rane is a 2016 graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2016. He has exhibited in New York, Philadelphia, Berlin, Carrara (Italy), and Utah.

A closing reception for the exhibition will take place Nov. 21, beginning at 6 p.m. For more information, see the Material art gallery website.