Kim Sloane blogs about the paintings of Marianne Gagnier. Gagnier's work is on view in a two-person exhibition with Suzanne Laura Kammin (Ro Lohin in the Project Room) at The Painting Center, New York, on view through February 22, 2014.

Sloane writes that Gagnier's paintings are "abstractions of the earth. Their essence is terrestrial. Field and ground is where they take place, and they are about how we revel in this world. Many of the paintings are in fact begun out of doors, on actual ground, in actual field. Wind waving leaf filled branches above, the ever-changing light and shade, cloud and sun and birds are the surround. The field is activated by color seized from sensations in nature, the ground is held by form, arrived at through a natural process of chance operations, that organize into an organic whole, each time wholly new and unlike any other. Each painting is the result of a particular, one-time only set of conditions. They are pulled and coaxed, in an extensive engagement with mind and materials."