The pleasures to be found in an exhibition like that of Michael Kindred Knight at Luis De Jesus — which is to say, in a thoughtful selection of good, solid abstract paintings — are of a rejuvenating, spiriting sort that feel of a piece with the onset of summer.
The 16 acrylic paintings in the show are all square and small in scale — between 12 and 18 inches across — and composed by way of a conscientious layering of plank-like brush strokes, set at stable horizontal and vertical intervals. The palette is both intelligent and affable: beach house blues set against warm, fleshy pinks and yellows; touches of a hard, no-nonsense red and grounding dashes of black. The strokes are architectural, though not fastidious or mechanical; solid and weighty yet distinctly humane. There can be no doubt of their having been laid by an individual human hand.
