Yellow has traditionally enjoyed a reputation as a happy color — one of warmth and illumination — but now it simultaneously plays a dubious role in the center of the State Department fear scale. It is the color of anxiety, of apprehension, having the potential to veer in the direction of hot terror reds and oranges, or the yet to be realized greens and blues of relative peace.

In "Yellow Ground," artist Jennifer Ratcliff presents paintings based upon the emotionally charged color—a rich raw sienna that calls to mind the desert scapes and dust storms of Iraq. Being more interested in color than making a political statement, Ratcliff conveys yellow's changing identity within the current political climate. It is this ambiguity that results in an anxious personal landscape, one in which forms frantically collide and transform, spiral and curve, and edge rapidly toward a resolution that seeks to describe the jaundiced reality we share.