Like much recent painting, Jim Morphesis’ work is revivalist, the painting of a believer of, and in, something that has passed. It is painted to recall the past and it seems that past’s willing victim, the willing record of the present’s historical damage. It measures, or is meant to, the damage of “the times,” and, more than that, a particular psychological damage as well: the much-heralded struggle to paint, to find feelings and images, in the late twentieth century. These are, the argument goes, the paintings we must make in order to make paintings. The very existence of such works as painting

Margaret Nielsen’s small obsessive panels suggest the stuff that dreams are made of. These 4-by-5-inch, densely painted views of forests, lakes, and campgrounds might have described some idyllic world of carefree leisure. But no, nature has taken a dramatically sinister turn. Four men in a canoe paddle through the waves and flames of a lake caught on fire. A child’s swing is suspended over a swirling pool of water filled with writhing snakes. Two trees fight for footing in an angry vortex, tethered together by a stout rope. A group of campers enjoy the evening glow of a warm fire while a burning