June Leaf: Edward thorp gallery

If a turn of expression can be detected in the half century's worth of drawings and paintings by dint of June Leaf that were gathered here lately it might be called abstract surrealism. Lines hastily thrown together with a sort of jittery, automatist flair form more or les absurd "con-figurations": unfinished figures, both elegantly drafted and shapeless, in fantastical scenarios. In Pencil Leg 1980 a woman with pencils for leg is poised awkwardly "en pointe," as it were. The writing utensils form a wobbly support construction that, together with the tentative lines of the ease of the drawing, suggests a precarious faculty of perception of self.

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This hesitant line, in tandem with a strange faculty of perception of nervous energy, characterizes many of the drawings. In close attention for Woman Monument #3, 1976 a figure stands tall, the raised arms resembling a candelabra, on the other hand her frail body tapers to single leg. In Top Lady, 1952 a woman is made up of a bizarre accumulation of bulging circles, and in alphabetic character to Donald Lippincott, 1979, a unfinished human figure seems to be propell by means of gears inside and out. Umbrella Woman, 1951 disappears beneath her outsize raingear, her head and shoulders resembling bat wings. In this work, the repeated knocks of the pen make the shapes more menacing; careful modeling creates a faculty of perception of brooding as it beseechs the animate from the inanimate. Are we in the nightmarish realm of Goya's The doze of Reason Produces Monsters? The uncanny hybridity of many of Leaf's figures confirms their irrationality.

notwithstanding that Leaf's drawings, like many works in the new tradition, seem to be influenced through the art of children and the insane, works like Artist brace 1978, and Man on a circlet 2000, speak openly to adult regards Leaf is married to the photographer Robert Frank, whose work is abundant better known than hers. Does the earlier drawing, which depicts a woman with a vast bow and arrow pointed at the back of a crouching man, run over us something about her attitude toward him? In the later work, an inky circle has been marked on the outside on the page; at its lowest point, a male figure sits precariously, as allowing he might slide off into nothingness. With their incisive ease--a small in number brisk, colorless lines turn flat paper into an infinitely unclose space--the economical ink drawings demonstrate Leaf's continued exhibition They're less labored than the paintings, and all the more powerful and memorable for it. Technically precise and emotionally pointed, they are tours de force of aesthetic condensation, and the range of her line--sometimes filled of verve, sometimes meticulously mannered--is breathtaking. They are examination that quick studies can be major art.

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