John Wesley
Jessica Fredericks Gallery
In the rear of Jessica Fredericks’ semi-basement Chelsea space, there hangs—or hung, during the gallery’s John Wesley miniretrospective this winter—a modest-size painting from 1976 entitled Princess Sacajawea Crossing the Snake. It depicts, in Wesley’s never-varying technique of flat shapes, delicate black outline, and matte, chalky color, a female in a leotard or bathing suit, seen in midair from behind, doing the splits, her arms extended groundward. The background consists of five horizontal bands: pale blue sky at top, then green distant “forest” (its upper edge is ragged, hinting at faraway