Publication: The East Hampton Press & The Southampton Press 6/26/08

Shows at Drawing Room and Pamela Williams

By Eric Ernst

It is interesting to note that while the photographer Adam Bartos, at the Drawing Room in East Hampton, and the

painter Denise Regan, at Pamela Williams in Amagansett, both offer vivid references to commonplace scenes and

images, both also create atmosphere and ambiance through the use of a sophisticated attentiveness to compositional

structure and accomplished contrasts of form and color...

In Denise Regan's recent works at the Pamela Williams Gallery in Amagansett, titled "Color Drift," the use of

commonplace scenes is filtered through a blast of light and color to create abstract images that are both gently

familiar and hauntingly mysterious.

Perhaps most surprising about these paintings is that, in spite of their dramatic stylistic departure from much of

her earlier works, somewhat Matisse-like landscapes and still-lifes, there is nonetheless a palpable sense of

sophistication and polish to these works that illustrates the artist's obvious affinity for abstraction.

This affinity derives from an innate understanding of structure, which Ms. Regan manifests in her intertwining of

illumination and color with an abstract appropriation of form and a powerful mixing of painterly textures.

Sometimes the combination of these components allows for a compositional frame of reference that visually

ties into her earlier, more immediately representational work, as in "Pink Beach" (oil on canvas, 2007). In other

works, such as the diptych "Pisces" (oil and encaustic on linen, 2008), on the other hand, the flow of paint is so

completely loose and free that, in spite of the gentle flow of clouds in the upper register, the work becomes less

a physical place than an emotional and conceptual landscape of the mind.

Denise Regan's exhibition titled "Color Drift" continues at the Pamela Williams Gallery through July 14.

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