motifs and ethnographic material from Africa and elsewhere. His compositions evoke “things,” such as a shield or sign, brooch or vessel, and often juxtapose a flat field with a sugges- tion of space or volume. His mark-making is improvisatory and rhythmic, and his shapes are more wobbly than fixed, yet at the same time perfectly poised. Working in acrylic on linen allows subtle layering and transparency in a range of idiosyncratic colors familiar to followers of Dowell’s work. It is interesting to parse the similarities and differences between their paintings. The pleasure of the show, however, is to eavesdrop on a conversation taking place between Dowell and Kalina’s paintings in the realm of the purely visual. The language of their paintings is different—as if one was speaking Spanish and the other French, but they both share an underly- ing syntax that makes the conversation intelligible. From the studios (Dowell’s in Los Angeles, Kalina’s in New York) of two painters of similar age, experience and interests—who by the way have never met—have emerged two new and distinct bodies of work that relate to each other in an especially stimulating way. Here are the closing words of Kalina’s article: Mapping the state of painting today and sensing its boundaries does not imply stasis, but rather a new kind of growth. Painters are, as ever, finding spaces for themselves and creating readily recognizable and unique bodies of work, work that is as capable as ever of emotional power, the giving of deep aesthetic pleasure, and the creation of the visually unexpected and surprising. jill weinberg adams New York, October 2017