Helen Miranda Wilson, Closer To Gray, 2007, oil on panel, 12" x 12"In Midtown at DC Moore, Helen Miranda Wilson is showing a group of very small panel paintings that employ horizontal stripes in a gorgeous color throwdown. The color arrays are built intuitively from the top down, and the stripes are painted precisely but allowing imperfections. Sometimes color revisions are evident, and the edges are softened by pulling one color into another with a blending brush. While this blending process seems pretty hokey, the effect is to cause a kind of breathing in the silky oil surfaces, releasing the image from hard-edge rigidity. One wall of panels are titled after nationalities (Italian, French, German, etc.) using color combinations that uncannily evoke the titles. Other works seem to key on personal experience for their instigation. These paintings are at once humble in stature and robust in effect -- endlessly changing color resonances in tiny handmade encapsulations.
