NinaJohnson

The surprising forms in Patter oscillate between many states: amused, self-conscious, self-righteous. Inspired by the works of Philip Guston, Ivan Albright, Elizabeth Murray, and Albert Mertz, they offer an opportunity to consider the craft and cunning of painting.

“My paintings are about how awkward it is to have a body,” says James English Leary. In his head paintings, the panel takes the shape of a face in profile’s silhouette; instead of rigid, rectangular edges, Leary presents the curve of a nose, the dip between lower lip and chin, or the flip of a ponytail. Like shadows, the faces have no features, just color. Ultramarine and cadmium create fields of hues defined only by Leary’s brushstrokes, variably visible. Leary then introduces another body that complicates the otherwise serene profiles.

In Cameo (Offering), the crop becomes more sinister as the head’s ponytail cuts over halfway into the wrist of a hand holding a small, egg-shaped head in the center of a woman’s silhouette. This corporeal damage, both violent and mundane, conveys a claustrophobic feeling of bodies misaligned.

Leary’s pointing finger series illustrate the cloistered sense of social paranoia to a great, and yet more humorous extent. Paintings shaped like a floating hand with one index finger pointing outward layer with a startled face in profile nestled into the base of the palm. High contrast shadows lend a noir, j’accuse sensibility.