Suzanne Muchnic profiles painter Laurie Fendrich on the occasion of Fendrich’s exhibition at Louis Stern Fine Arts, on view through December 3, 2016.

Muchnic writes: “Beyond their fine craftsmanship and comic edge, Fendrich’s spirited abstractions and [Jane ]Austen’s captivating stories may appear to have little in common. But as critic Mark W. Stevens has noted, Austen is a touchstone for Fendrich, who draws strength from the novels and titles some of her paintings after them. Although the connections are largely unnoticed, both the books and the artworks are the creations of women who work in circumscribed territory—Austen as a keen observer of human behavior at a particular time and place, Fendrich as a deft orchestrator of flat, interlocking, richly colored, soft-edged shapes. Both bodies of work are relatively modest in size and ambition, but intricately fashioned and extraordinarily complex. Things come apart but then fall into place.”