I sat down to write this based on the images from Stevie Dix’s show at the Journal Gallery’s Tennis Elbow — the same images you see before you now — but the textures in the images were so beguiling that I said to myself, I’ve got to go see these in person. Which is exactly what I did. Percentage-wise Dix’s paintings are mainly color fields of black or white. But the texture of Dix’s stroke is positively frosting-like. Within her black and white vistas, there come eruptions of shapes that seem at once improvisational and figurative. The effect is as though Dix is creating works of abstract painting on a canvas that is itself a painting composed of Dix vigorous brushstrokes. It’s an approach that ingeniously synthesizes two strands of the abstract tradition into one. Each of the square canvases is titled in such a way that deepens the mystery and adds to the allure.

So far the artists we’ve seen at Tennis Elbow have been younger, emerging painters. Exactly the sort of artists who will decide what the future of painting will be. For an insight into what’s on their mind and what that future might entail, we thought we’d dig a bit deeper. Stay tuned. For now, we’ll just say that this is the Belgian-born, London/Suffolk-based painter first show in New York, and worth a look!