Temma Bell paints a very strong modernist figuration within a decorative (in the French sense) picture. She sees everything in her world as possible for inclusion in her painting, indoors and out, objects and people. She has a strong sense of composition and her color is handled with bold intensity. She creates an exciting and believable real space in one roofscape and in a still life with pumpkin and dog. The use of animals in her pictures as both figuration and symbol is sensitive and just. There is a sense of love for daylight and life which floods her work to give something poetic to the viewer. At the same time, her strong, binding, calligraphic brushwork evokes a surface and perhaps inner tension which begs to be taken to more literary ends. Her work is intensely youthful and, with time and individuation, will no doubt take on either a more complex or simplified classicized direction with choices as to the importance of what the paint says and her direction concerning the use of symbol and casually placed still-life objects.

—Donald Butkovich