ROSENBERG & CO. GALLERY

19 E. 66 st. NYC

SOLO EXHIBITION 

JUNE 13 - SEPT.12 - 2015  Reviewed by Lilly Wei, art critic, curator, writer

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Maureen Chatfield’s resplendent abstraction on view at the latest incarnation of the legendary Rosenberg gallery felt quite at home in this intimate town-house setting. Chatfield’s painting have the same DNA as Rosenberg’s long line of modernest masterpieces, stamped by the influence of Picasso, the school of Paris—in particular, Nicolas de Staël—the Abstract Expressionists, and the Neo-Expressionists.

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A natural colorist, Chatfield fearlessly mines the spectrum, from the gorgeous reds of Matisse to the rich blacks that conjure Franz Kline’s swashbuckling brushwork and Robert Motherwell’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic to the muted, nuanced shades of Richard Diebenkorn. Some of the most recent works are more overtly landscapes, Nevertheless, all adeptly balance the ration between abstraction and representation, and all are a celebration of nature.

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Chatfield’s mood swings in these two dozen works (mostly 2013 and onward), some with titles that are place names, such as Georgica Pond (2013) and East End (2014). Others are more generalized such as the lovely Moontide (2013) and still others refer to fictive locales and states of being , such as Middle Earth (2014) and Meditation (2013). What Chatfield does best—by applying layer upon layer of paint—is to make paintings of palpable presence and pleasure.

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LiLLY WEI

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Original Source: ARTNEWS SEPTEMBER 2015

Maureen Chatfield, Middle Earth,  Oct. 2014, oil on canvas, 20” x 24”, SOLO EXHIBITION

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