"Graham Nickson: Recent Paintings".

"Graham Nickson: Recent Paintings," at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, New York. April 3-28, 2001

Viewers unfamiliar with Graham Nickson's work were likely put off by his recent show of six large canvases at Salander-O'Reilly, put off, that is, by an assault of shockingly bright acrylic color. Currently the dean of the New York Studio School and the recipient of numerous awards and grants, Nickson is an exceptionally well-trained artist, one who certainly knows the difference between vibrant colors and ones that induce nausea. As has long been noted during his career, Nickson is an excellent draughtsman, and he has a beguiling way with composition, so we should guard against the sort of knee-jerk reactions to his work that would pronounce them monstrously gauche, fit only for a sidewalk art sale. (I must admit, that was my first reaction.) In a catalogue essay for a show last year at the Frye Art Museum, the artist Andrew Forge acknowledged that Nickson's "color is extreme" while noting that his watercolors have "a warmth and an unpredictable sensuality that the acrylics seem to exclude in the interest of timeless order." Acrylic paint does, in fact, seem to be a problem in these works: quite simply, it can be an ugly medium, harshly reflecting light in colors that never seem natural (and, oddly enough, even the two works in oil look like acrylics).

Not that naturalism is the goal of Nickson's paintings, but a certain level of realism is. For instance, in Balloon Woman (2001) a woman in a blue bikini in the foreground of a lake or riverside beach scene holds a bunch of blue and black balloons aloft. The setting sun transforms the beach on which she stands into a strip of dark reds, oranges, maroons, and pinks, which contrast strongly with a band of dark greens, blues, violets, and purples representing the water behind the woman. Across the water, conical hills are deep purple, and, above them, the sky blushes peach and orange. Presented frontally, with the ...