SANTA FE, NM.- The first glimpse of pale green sprouts in spring. The dark shadowed green of a pine forest. The green of a wave shot through with light. Moss and lichens. Broccoli and apples, pears and emeralds. Tree frogs and jade. Oxidized copper and spikey aloe. Chlorophyll green is a foundational pigment, a critical color in the palette of the earth.

This year Charlotte Jackson Fine Art’s annual single color group exhibition explores this dynamic and essential hue through a diverse range of works in a variety of mediums by artists including John Beech, William Metcalf, Olivier Mosset, Elliot Norquist, Liane Nouri, Helen Pashgian, Heiner Thiel, Jeremy Thomas, and Clark Walding.

Green has a deep history in many human cultures as a color associated with nature, renewal, abundance, calm refreshment and youthful vigor due to its connection to plant life. Spring, growth, freshness, green is an essential color, complex with fundamental possibilities.

Each of the artists in Green Acres approaches the color with their own unique angle and shading. Liane Nouri’s Resurrection, a series of six small boxes, runs like an arpeggio from blue through teal, emerald, spring, and yellow greens. John Beeches Slent #14 presents a disorienting-slanted box with a self-consciously fabricated deep foam green, topped with marine blue. William Metcalf’s precise and visually deceptive acrylic on Alupanel piece, Ever Green, gives the illusion of transparent Kelly green rectangles arranged over a darker panel. Spruce Green, Jeremy Thomas’ dimpled and folded metal sculpture gives us the contradiction of a hue taken from nature, presented in a slick and eye-catching fetish finish, while Helen Pashgian’s epoxy and resin sphere presents mysterious depths of watery blue-greens and turquoise. Heiner Thiel’s strangely shaped metal wall-sculpture only barely hints at green with its yellowed chartreuse iteration, while Eliot Norquist’s own metal wall-sculpture, Green Fold, gives us the contrast of black with the pure green hue of traffic lights and grassy swathes.

Each green, each work of art, leads the viewer step by step through a varied exploration, presenting the opportunity to deepen our experience of this omnipresent and important color.