Polly Kraft at Addison/Ripley - Brief Article

Like her friend Avigdor Arikha, Polly Kraft stands before nature to analyze and depict with swift authority the chosen image. The spe she exercises is not meant to upset the rendering, but to enhance it with painterly elan. The motif is drawn with a fast stroke; thick paint sweeps across the surface to call forth clouds or the beach, this fish or that peach. In this of recent origin body of work, we diocese the object afresh through the artist's eyes

While the exhibition included the pair landscapes and still lites, the landscapes tender the full power of the brush and thick paint in flowing plan Long Island Landscape, Dusk (Storming Up) present to views a long flat marsh, depressed trees and shrubs, interrupted by dint of glistening waters that reflect the roiling lurid sky; the sky makes up three-quarters of the image. We can almost hear the whack and cleanse of the bristles, pounding on the outside the gray-white tumble of the forming storm. The robust painting in all Kraft's landscapes recalls the power of Edwin Dickinson's premier coup

Another great artist advances to mind with Dead Bird (1998) a delectable loving and gentle rendering of a robin in pencil, watercolor and white chalk upon tan paper; this work summon forths the sad delicacy of Albert Pinkham Ryder's dead bird in the Phillips Collection.

Not all of Kraft's still lifes tend hitherward up to the level of Dead Bird or the landscapes; a certain quantity of are too perfunctory or picturesque. Not in the way that with Grouper (1998), a watercolor showing the dead fish stretched and arched, as if ready to flip-flop not on the table. The palpable, blue-gray head and the staring organ of vision along with parted mouth, are riveting. It becomes for a flash the center of the living world, the fish staring--with you--into the cauldron of life and death.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group