In his approach to painting AI Payne seeks to fuse premeditated structure and spontaneous expression, synthesizing systematic and intuitive processes in a kind of conceptualized action painting. One work in this group of 15 dynamic paintings, on large canvases and on paper, stands out; here the finely balanced tension between these two mentalities is catalyzed into a breathtaking image which both shows the immediacy of controlled passion and evokes a multivalent symbolism.

The painting’s rather literal title, Tree, 1984, is only a skeletal reference to the richly metaphoric quality of the