While each compact painting is an individualized gem in its own right, the paintings collectively evince a mind uncommonly alive not only to the infinitely variable pleasures and possibilities of abstract painting but also to its own pluralistic, ever-changing complexity (Johnson).
His "Fischerdorf," featuring a tiny moon over another lake, is a bit overpowered by Bess's city nocturne dominated by a bright street light and a similarly compact painting of a kerosene lamp by Guston.
Anne Arnold's ruggedly chiseled portrait in wood of the excellent painter Lois Dodd, Catherine Murphy's acutely observed painting of a sumac forest and Susanna Coffey's intensely compacted painted self-portrait prove traditionalism doesn't have to stultify.
Lisa Sigal, the show's most recent alum (2000), has jumped from compact abstract painting to directly attacking a whole wall, but it's too early to tell where she is going.
This effect, combined with Mr. Sloan's insistent rhythms, yielded a compact tone-painting of a bicycle in motion.
(Johnson) JEFF SONHOUSE: 'THE PANOPTIC CON' As sharp visually as they are politically, Mr. Sonhouse's compact, finely painted Pop-Surrealist portraits depict masked African American men in colorful tuxedos with hair made of real matches, steel wool and other materials.
The compact space, painted blue and red with punching bags and tires hanging from the walls, is full of young men, some barely teenagers, learning to throw an uppercut.
Among the painters, Jennifer Mazza paints compact intersections of hands; Margaret Murphy paints kitsch images over a background of pictorial knots; while Roberta Melzl paints decorative swirls of cord, ribbon or rope.
It is there in the very earliest work, as Mondrian puts the image together, blocking, pushing, compacting the paint just like the clay and loam between the old timbers of the farmhouse depicted: he is building the picture.
I am sure that I have seen Andrea Mantegna's "Adoration of the Shepherds," but now I want to go back for another look at this compact, intensely detailed painting dating from shortly after 1450.
Piano replaced the walkway with a compact steel cube painted a color that echoes the limestone.
