You + Me is artist Heather Ward Miles’ current exhibition in the Harrison Gallery. It's hard not to get dizzy when you first walk in — the pieces are reminiscent of the visual effect of squeezing your eyes too tightly, or maybe the surge of colorful dots one might see when standing up too quickly after a bout of lightheadedness. You + Me is, in a word: destabilizing.

The collection features huge canvases covered in a flurry of abstract, acrylic forms. She favors colors you may find in nature: combinations of verdant greens with muted reds, yellows, golds, and oceanic shades of blue. Her abstract forms are almost all organic shapes. For some pieces in You + Me, the repetitive oblong ovals take on a bodily quality, like in Bittersweet, where she lets the paint trickle from clusters of flesh-colored shapes.

At times, these paintings veer from the abstract into the naturalistic, like Demeter, a painting that prominently features cacti. Demeter feels psychedelic: like a strange vision one might see on a lightheaded, thirst-induced journey through the desert. It is all at once familiar and strange.

Ward is interested in binaries. “The show reflects all sorts of relationships,” says Ward, “relationships between parents and children, between romantic partners, between the living and the dead, god and the planet, birth and death.” Like fraternal twins, each piece in You + Me has a companion painting. One such pairing is Reverence and Adoration, two works with black, seed-like shapes atop what appear to be fragmented landscapes.

*Reverence* and *Adoration*
acrylic paintings on canvas

You + Me is brilliantly bizarre, but it has an unexpected warmth. Maybe it’s the result of Miles’ interest in relationships. Or, perhaps it’s her unusual sense of wonder shining from each piece– “I find the idea that I am somehow tethered to the magic of life inspiring,” she says, “like a little secret the universe has only for me.” A painting like “I need to stop talking shit” is a soft explosion of pink and lemon yellow, with bold streaks flying in all directions. Even amidst the chaos of the composition, it seems that Miles wants to breathe optimism into this piece, so she paints the canvas with a palette that evokes springtime colors.

*I Need to Stop Talking Shit*
acrylic on canvas

Heather Ward Miles describes her rationale behind naming the show. “The title is really You (the universe) + Me (the artist),” she says. Such a big concept would likely feel too ambitious in the hands of another artist. However, most artists don’t know Miles’ secrets, and they probably never will. Those secrets are between her and the universe.