While Martha Mayer Erlebacher has certainly studied the history of art, and has looked hard at the rich tradition of allegorical painting, she is neither a neo-Classicist nor a rigid adherent of any theory of contemporary narrative painting. Instead she is guided in her treatment of form and content by a firm belief that, as she has said on occasion, “the human experience is the proper subject matter of art.”

Erlebacher, unlike some of her contemporaries, allows herself to vary her technique. Compared with her meticulous applications of a few years ago, the brushwork employed here was relatively