William Eckhardt Kohler reviews Carolyn Case: Homemade Tatoo at Asya Geisberg, Chelsea, New York, on view through October 14, 2017.

Kohler writes: “Case digs in with persistence, perseverance, and painterly inventiveness. Seeing this, one might think that paint and painting are the subject of these paintings, but that is only true in part. The paintings have a quality of haphazard unplanned accumulation like a tent city: chaotic, alive, colorful and in the throes of creation or under threat of imminent dissolution. They also have a serenity in the way that Case repeatedly erases the paint, sanding back down to and through the white ground to create an ethereal glow. In this way the form and language of paint and painting strike me as inseparable from her experiences in life as a parent, teacher, and seeker.”