Margaret Neill, Trek, 2005, 17 x 24 inches, charcoal on paperReceiving a recent note from Brooklyn painter Margaret Neill prompted me to revisit her work. I've long admired her paintings -- undulating curving color bands with deep layered surfaces -- but I was not familiar with her drawings. Explorations of intersecting archetypal shapes -- arcs, elipses, circles -- in dense charcoal on white ground, these works are beautifully direct and sensuous. Their configurations are at once primal and analytical, the products of a highly focused painter's engagement with her materials, with the discipline of drawing, and with the world.
