Paul Behnke photo blogs a visit to the studio of painter Elizabeth Gilfilen. Gilfilen’s work is on view in the group exhibition Conversations, curated by Sharon Louden, at Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, on view through August 22, 2014.

Behnke notes: “Gilfilen paints large canvases with striking, sophisticated color palettes and seemingly frenzied paint application that make an urgent case for the continued relevancy of gestural abstraction. The scrawled marks congeal to form imposing masses, that provide the structure and focus of the compositions, then break away again into hazy fields of color or interlacing tendrils.”