Patrick Neal reviews Susan Jane Walp, Paintings on Paper at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York (through October 17) and Scott Brodie, Then & Now: Retrospective at Albany Center Gallery, Albany, NY (through October 3).

Neal observes that "[Walp's] sensibility as a painter and the paintings she makes feel resolutely bound together drawing the viewer in with their conviction… One notes her touch and how she applies the medium, sometimes smudgy or thinned to an exact viscosity in order to capture the air, weight, and character of a crisply folded cloth, stem on a bunch of grapes or the space between table legs… Brodie is able to harness all sorts of painterly conventions at will, easily crossing the line between figuration or abstraction depending on the shape, scale and emotional tenor of a given project. The show is a veritable celebration of painterly painting culled from the rounds of day-to-day activities."