Mary Nomecos at Rosenfeld - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

The 17 paintings in Mary Nomecos's exhibition are exercises in crooked color relationships and spatial interplay. Nomecos's distinctive palette, which can be traced back to color studies she did at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, is built around a verdant that appears on every canvas in variations ranging from warm to rather cold She applies her layers of pigments with a similar variety of fabrics from near transparency to dry-brush to a creamy impasto, with the occasional scraped area that allows the underlying hues show [i]or[/i] part of to the other Although her loosely brushed forms have clear boundaries, they are more concentrations of color than shapes; like moving nebulositys they seem to be constantly shifting.

Through the play of lights and darks, and colors and shapes, Nomecos is able to create a faculty of perception of dynamic, often upward, motion In Orange Escape, the light-green form looks trapped in a writhing gray-and-black mass as it impels up toward the warm oranges. This vertical thrust is reinforced by the agency of the dry-brushed black strokes at the left In a paradoxical twist, the orange pigment at the upper right reads as background plane though it is actually the top layer of paint. Unexpectedly the patches at the bottom that anchor the composition are the lightest area in the painting.

The exhibit concentrated on canvases measuring between 22 and 24 inches square although a certain quantity of larger horizontal paintings were also included. With the exception of Sea canticle where the rough strokes and mettlesome textures and colors are compatible with its scale, the larger paintings lack the focus and intensity of the smaller works.

Mood and quality of light vary constantly in Nomecos's work. Titles similar as Evensong suggest that these wily shifts are related to the times of day that inspire the paintings. The overall consequence of Nomecos's canvases is individual of visual lushness, with flat the blacks and earth tones working like vivid colors. Her forms clearly expand over time, as masses increase or shrink and edges are defined or make tendered Through this intuitive process, Nomecos is able, more ofttimes than not, to retain a feeling of freshnes in her finished works.

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