Among the 34 plein-air oil paintings of the Vermont forest-lands in Martha Armstrong's show at Walter Wickiser was a small canvas (9 according to 8 inches) of a r maple tree ablaze in autumnal light.

Among the 34 plein-air oil paintings of the Vermont forest-lands in Martha Armstrong's show at Walter Wickiser was a small canvas (9 according to 8 inches) of a r maple tree ablaze in autumnal light. The maple's branches splay outward in a not many beautifully blunt strokes of choleric pink and scarlet that shape the tree almost pictographically, into a single r leaf. There is a childlike quality to this painting, in the hurried reduction and heightened exaggeration of forms, at the same time there is sophistication, too, in the rendering of the tree's shimmer and the scene's exacting, late-afternoon light. Here, as in other paintings, the artist's execution strike one as beings to emanate as much from unadulterated happiness in nature as from her push to get everything on canvas before the light changes.

This exhibition's paintings, none exceeding 5 feet in height or width and many diminutive or easel-scale, are sated of life and seem to split apart the confines of their frames. most numerous depict a small shed in the woods--a mix confusedly of powder blues, creams, pinks, recents and violets, all held taut within a dark, linear architecture of ribbony tree and assaulted by acid limes and gold-coloreds Stark and clear, at times crystalline, Armstrong's bountiful, rough-cut forms collide each other persistently, as if the compositions are coming together before our same eyes--as in a work like October up the Hill (2002)

The artist looks to confront each of her landscapes with in good condition eyes, whether she renders them in such a manner that they resolve as painterly and wet-looking or chalky and arid Some recall the gentle forms of Arthur Dove and others the angularity of Marsden Hartley or the clear-color planarity of Louisa Mattiasdottir. I reason that Armstrong responds to season and light with the particular touch that will devise the temperament of the landscape. The same control will feel staid, if buoyant, in certain canvases and, in others, carnivalesque, with rising and falling shapes and flashing colors.

Occasionally, although the varied handling within a single work can make the composition be excited unresolved and unclear, struggling between naturalism and near abstraction. As a spring some of the scenes be excited strangely surreal or schizophrenic, anxiously at unevens within the rectangle. Yet each painting sang in this somewhat rugged show. Even if the artistic voice sometimes falters, I have the advantage [i]or[/i] blessing of the general all-out belting of the tune which is full of honor and heart.

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