Carl Little reviews the exhibition Jon Imber: Force of Nature at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, Maine, on view through July 6, 2014.

Little writes: "'Low Tide' (2004), the earliest piece in the show, leads me to paraphrase a song by Bob Dylan, Imber’s favorite poet: tangled up in hues. It’s not a perfect alignment as the painter is very aware of how to put colors together—creamy whites, pale blues, rich yellows, pinks. No, the brushstrokes are what inspire the tangled up idea, but for all their freedom and improvisation—looping, twisting, curling; wide, thin, dashed— they, too, are assembled toward a compositional end. And we come away with a new sense of that disarray left on the shore when the tide recedes, and with an admiration for what CMCA director Suzette McAvoy calls 'a fearless investigation of painterly space.'"