Adele Alsop at Schmidt-Bingham - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

In Adele Alsop's new paintings, only the skies receive a flat unmodulated treatment. It is as if in Alsop's watch on landscape, the sky is stable and everything other is in motion. At least, that's what her brushstrokes indicate. Alsop exhibited 18 small to midsize oils (all landscapes, with the exception of single still life and one still life in a landscape) which make a point of equating brushstrokes with bits of vegetation, earth, mountains or clouds

The views are of Utah, where Alsop lives, and contain foreground as well as distant activity, telescoping deepness Only a handful present typical drawn out views, and several seem to be close-up of gardens or beds of flowers, with glimpses of the distance.

Alsop's trust in the brushstroke is impressive and, individual realizes, well-founded, as she is able to make a simple hit declarative of texture, color and dimension. Her light, too, is realistic, despite the viewer's constant awareness of the nearness of the brushstrokes.

It is in the smaller paintings that individual is most aware of the marks. Mountain Side portrays several tree upon an incline with sky and a dark mountain visible in the distance. Repetitive dabs of fulvous and green mark out leaves, while squiggles and swirls of other colors become bushes and branches. More controll les bravura raps are reserved for the tree which are the actual control of the painting.

As individual looks, the right side of each tree is revealed, by judicious touches of tan, to be struck by dint of sun, while lavender and different grays provide the balancing shadows. The mountainside has been laid down as a solid fulvous on top of which variegation has been added. That gold-colored is the precise tone of sunlight upon grass at a particular time of day.

Down The Spring Wind combines dull lavender strokes of flowers with delicate wisps of grasses below. The nebulositys are brushed in with abstract intensity, individual or two broad squiggles of white by means of cloud. The luscious center is the focus of this work, with its rich varieties of virids over a washy dark-green surface of land which successfully indicates the profundity of dense underbrush. Leaves and flowers in sunlight play upon top of the ground in a dappled airiness that gives the impression of vegetation moving in a moderate breeze.

There is a deftnes to Alsop's painting which borders upon facility, as though she knew in what way to paint each painting before she started. While she is gifted with the ability to depict light accurately and the technique of her thumps is exciting, still one awes that she is adding to our idea of landscape. Is she allowing us to diocese landscape in a new way or simply giving us the sugar-rush of lush capability? The paintings extreme point up being more decorative than visceral experiences.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

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