Good stout paint surfaces occupied with great eclat and surety mark the works of this vigorous, latterday action painter. The sureness of image and impeccable control is a little unnerving and raises a nagging suspicion that the “precarious journey into the unknown” was as predictable as a Michelin Tour. But perhaps it is an unfair cliche to expect painting as handsome, genuine, and large as these to register the uncertainties and shifts in goal that go with all-out improvisation. As a group they have a true calligraphic declaration in that the gesture, with all its thrust, is contained, and the boundaries of the painting are never apparent as a limitation. Color is used as a counterpoint to the calligraphy; in Dr. S the essential statement is a heavy black gesture on a yellow field, the complex movement of the black modified by yellows and oranges alternately dragged into and painted over by the black. The presence of these secondary colors serves to fuse the image with the background field of paint so that the calligraphy is spatially trapped by a painterly involvement rather than being drawn “on” a surface. Very likely the most exciting of the lot is Big Red in which a fuller palette takes advantage of the relative densities of color as a means of generating a dramatic conflict between paint and image. Miss Remington is a consistent performer and even if the act lacks the element of danger it is a pleasure to watch.

—Doug McClellan