ART;
Beyond Showing Textural Extremes in Painting

Helen Harrison. The New York Times, p. 30, L. I., Nov. 28, 1993
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/28/nyregion/art-beyond-showing-textural-extremes-in-painting.html

“Thick & Thin”Islip Art Museum, 50 Irish Lane, East Islip. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10 A.M. to 4 P.M.; Sundays, 2 to 4:30 P.M. Through Dec. 5.

Works by 13 artists have been chosen by Karen Shaw, the museum’s curator, to illustrate two technical extremes in painting. This may seem like a mere exercise, but there is a lot more to the show than just a demonstration of how to handle paint.

Six of the painters emphasize the tactile qualities of their material, asserting paint’s primary role in the development of imagery. Sometimes, the paint itself literally is the imagery, as in Leslie Wayne’s small panels covered in slabs of earthy pigment. Mr. Wayne uses paint as a sculptural material, scraping and pushing it into heavy folds whose confrontations produce surprisingly dynamic tensions.

Tony De Blasi makes brushstrokes into independent wall reliefs. Disembodied from the canvas, they float gracefully in a spatial limbo as their shadows echo the lively arabesques and bold blots of color.