31 Jan 2020

Kathleen Craig & Sarah Lubin

Nancy Margolis Gallery

Reviewed by Franklin Einspruch

Kathleen Craig and Sarah Lubin appear at Margolis in apt juxtaposition. Both of them are ably painting out of a tradition of figurative modernism that veers into the non-objective. The spaces are odd and shapes truncate mysteriously. The colors are ends in themselves.

Some of the Craigs don't come off. Pictorial invention gets upstaged by the animals depicted in Still Life With Crows and Cat in the Coffee (all are 2019). On the other hand, a nigh abstraction, Purple Floor Still Life, feels unsolved. But she hits redemptive sweet spots in Rocks and Weed and Still Life with Rainbow Pitcher, both engrossing in composition and tone.

Lubin is quoting herself with a strain that I haven't seen in her work previously. The leaves in the eminently successful Geranium, for instance, reappear as awkward intrusions in Taking Notes. Here the painters part, as Craig could bear down on the forms harder, while Lubin could productively settle for more conventional picture-making and relax into her luscious and inerrant color sense.