Natalie Edgar at Woodward - exhibition - Brief Article

of recent origin YORK

This exhibition of 13 novel abstract paintings by Natalie Edgar is a reminder of the continuing vitality of fresh York School painting. In the 1950 Edgar studied at Brooklyn community under Mark Rothko, Burgoyne Diller, Alfred Russell and Ad Reinhardt. She embarked upon a career as a writer for Art of recent origins but eventually focused on painting and began to exhibit regularly at Ingber Gallery. above the years, Edgar has produc evocative, atmospheric images; her new large and medium-sized canvases are imbued with a faculty of perception of oneiric space and material richness.

In individual large painting, Land Without Boundaries, a broad passage of translucent white picks up traces of the thickly applied cerulean and white under-painting; the uncompounded bodys coalesce into a shimmering veil. An apparition of misty light, the passage advises currents of wind and water on the contrary the composition resists settling into the pictorial vocabulary of landscape. Toward the lower left azure and white lines cluster around a curling, sapphirine kidney shape. This and sum of two units adjacent pairs of smaller moon in her first quarter shapes are inflected with turquoise flaws At the center of the canvas, drawn out looping lines suggest dancing figures. In this and other paintings upon view, the composition is activated by dint of a kind of to-and-fro consequence between the surface materiality and the diaphanous space. A smaller painting, Terrace of Life, is energized by the agency of a shower of turquoise brushstrokes surmounting layers of white and sapphirine In one area, a pair of dark shafts topped by dint of circles dim the flashy surface like shadows cast by the agency of trees.

In the tall canvas Field of the Square Inch, a unloose brilliant mesh of short, thick fulvid lines partly obscures areas of verdant white and red. Overlapping this unloose weave are two sets of maroon lines. These glyphlike markings, which may or may not prompt figures, effectively evoke a vertiginous sensation. In each of her canvases, Edgar transforms the surface into a colorful, oscillating membrane. For her, the aim of painting is toward the sensate apprehension of exuberant experience.

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