Bridget Riley described the experience of viewing her paintings as an “active, vibrating, pleasure,"[i] and was surprised and annoyed that others considered her work painful to look at.

In my memory the painting is titled, “Me and Joe.” It is small, maybe ten by fourteen inches. I am looking at the painting from behind the backs of several classmates who stand clustered around it.

When I saw “The Enamored Mage” in person I was completely transfixed. Painted with heavy impasto, the protrusions of paint gush out of the surface, some following the image, some swelling under it.

It was a Lord of the Flies summer. I was coming from an undergraduate art program that served only to nurture the special seed...

A hot/cold interior, a crimson stage in the middle of a veiled blue vault, one lone, naked lady, tiny in scale but lit up—the lightest thing in the room-- presiding over a vast and louche lounge.

At the time the existence of this intelligent, vivacious woman painter was as inspiring and important to me as the paintings themselves.

It is a quiet painting, although we can hear the voices of women calling to each other as they work, the sound of a news announcer on the radio, or a song, perhaps a finch in its cage singing, and the background throb of a pigeon from the rooftop.

Her pieces seemed indifferent to the visual hierarchy that defines space, distance, or remove. Sleigh’s eyes were an equalizing force and connected her with her subjects in a way that felt personal and political.

Dawn Clements’ giant watercolor on paper, capturing dying peonies, is achingly beautiful. Her touch is light, her eye, and hand in a lock step; the drawing is a placeholder for where the peonies once were.