November 26, 2001

MARIO NAVES

Gallery goers accustomed to the quick fix will trot right past the paintings of Hester Simpson, and is it any wonder why? The contemporary scene with its glut of thingamajigs and its paucity of inspiration, engenders impatience for anything requiring more than a brief nod of recognition which is a roundabout way of saying that Ms. Simpson’s abstractions, currently the subject of an exhibition at Ricco Maresca Gallery, are something other than the usual.

Layering thinned acrylics onto small, boxy canvases, Ms. Simpson endows her paintings of checkerboards and stripes with a satiny, bottomless sheen. Geometry is, for this painter, less an ultimatum than an armature upon which her velvety palette is free to state its case. Ms. Simpson’s brush states its case as well, moving with a surety that is nonetheless conscious of its options. Consequently, the paintings are tinged with an anxiety that is both provisional and tender; there’s more edge to these lustrous paintings than one might expect. Ms. Simpson falters when she favors surface over color, but when she gives color leeway, the canvases radiate a fragile contentment. And if that phrase sounds like so much bad poetry, try coming up with a better trope for the allusive haze of green blue-black and purple that is Forgotten Morning (2001). Hester Simpson: Small Paintings is at Ricco Maresca Gallery, 529 West 20th Street, until Jan. 5.