Michael J. Fressola reviews the exhibition A Visual Journey featuring paintings and drawings by Colman Rutkin at the Staten Island Museum, on view through January 21, 2013.

Fressola writes: "Rutkin reports to a world of his own, a luminous plane that apparently has water and oxygen and the means of sustaining life. But there are things we recognize. We see (or we think we see) seed pods and buds, teardrops made of white porcelain, atmospheric conditions, solar storms and cloudscapes. Or are we trekking inside microscopic places, into physical beings… As a painter, draughtsman and printmaker, Rutkin has a distinct vocabulary coupled with a traditional approach. The surfaces of the paintings, which are almost always on paper, are elaborately layered with underpaintings and glazes. Some seem almost backlit and there’s opalescence everywhere."

An online catalogue of Rutkin's prints is available from the museum website.