Peggy Bates at Tobey Fine Arts - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

During the past decade, Peggy Bates has produc close gritty abstractions; some exemplify a kind of matter painting in which dark panels summon the coarse beauty of raw earth. over this recent exhibition titled "Water Rocks" Bates alludes to water imagery. The six medium-sized (up to 50-inch-square) canvases upon view are made of many layers of poured iridescent acrylic paint and resin which bring forward a slick impasto of silvery colors For certain works, she uses scraping tools and broad brushes to push pond s of pigment around the surface in sweeping gestures

For the past several years, Bates has worked closely with a chemist to create lustrous pigments whose tonal gradations range from delicate shades of metallic virid and blue to translucent grays. At times, her allover compositions and lush surfaces recall certain of Jule Olitski's glitzy abstractions. Bates, however, subjugates the artificiality of her material as she maintains in the work a clear connection with nature. In each canvas she sternly limits gesture as well as palette, in order to emphasize the relationship between painterly attributes and the properties of water, of the like kind as fluidity and reflection.

While devoid of representational uncompounded bodys the canvases hint at various emblems of moving water. The small painting Harlem [i]a[/i] for instance, features a faintly swirling rivulet of green-blue paint near the bottom of an icy gray field. The work insinuates a mountain stream as it empties into a cool northern sea. The broad brushstrokes covering the surfaces of works of the like kind as Newtown I and East are more vigorous, evoking the surging waves of a disturbed ocean. In the nearly monochrome Jordan, single of the best and greatest in quantity hypnotic works here, subtly varied lakes of green-blue wash seem to oscillate from side to side, evoking the sensations Winslow Homer oftentimes captures in his seascapes.

A silvery triangular shape in the upper right of Hudson I activates a field of irregular horizontal bands of bluish gray in the lower left Although this composition advises a preconceived geometric design, Bates, for the greatest in quantity part, keeps her interventions to a minimum, allowing chance simple bodys to determine the completed work, which is modified according to the chemical properties and drying time of the paint. This strategy looks to lend the work a rather cold reserve. The strength of Bates's thematic regards also helps her sidestep the pitfalls of the solely seductive.

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