“Recalculation: Past & Present” by Judith Jaffe

Artist Judith Jaffe calls her fall exhibit in the Brodigan Gallery “a pictorial journey of my inner world.” As an octogenarian, Jaffe has had decades of observation, of pain and joy, to color that world.

“Recalculation” includes somber works from the 1980s that Jaffe once considered finished; she recently discovered that, thanks to a new, more joyous perspective on life, they were not. She went on to repaint and collage them, letting her art play out that evolving pictorial journey.

The pendulum-swinging nature of life, the inherent switchbacks and contradictions, informs Jaffe’s work. “I once read that in life, there is much cruelty and terror, but also a wondrous and overpowering beauty,” says Jaffe, who received her BFA from Tufts and a degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. “Both forces are necessary, and together they create a mysterious and remarkable world, a world that dwells at the heart of all my work.”