Borrowing some of the magic hocus-pocus of Indian medicine men, De Forest selects articles from the kitchen drawer, or the play-pen, paints them with bright colors or dapples and spots them to resemble dyed leather or pinto hide, and assembles them in a painting or on top of a frame to create imaginative works which are both stimulating and amusing. Spirited, colorful, often thought-provoking despite their whimsy, they are not mere child’s play, De Forest is a craftsman. He sometimes dispenses with relief construction and extraneous frame trappings to work solely with oil and canvas, presenting heavily-textured bird’s-eye or rimrock views of such plains life as Indian villages or sheep ranches in the badlands. These are deceptively naive and are possibly his best achievements in this show (which is presented in honor of his having won the 1962 Nealie Sullivan award of $1,000 for “talent and promise.”)

—E. M. Polley