One Work, Short Take: Otis Jones and Marcelyn McNeil

For this edition of my ongoing series One Work, Short Take I intended to write about a singular painting by Otis Jones on view in the captivating and sparse exhibition at Barry Whistler Gallery. But here I am breaking my own rule. After seeing the equally stirring show of Marcelyn McNeil’s paintings at Conduit Gallery I knew I had to write about both artists in the same conversation. 

What struck me about each artist is the way they treat the notion of “abstract” painting in similar and dissimilar manners. Each is masterful at creating paintings built from a decisive material chess game, where every small aesthetic move has a profound impact on the overall work of art. Both artists share a proclivity for abstraction formed from a minimalist adoption of a few elemental techniques refined and polished into a razor-sharp relationship. The two stunning works I’ve been ruminating over this past week are Jones’ factually titled Red Oxide with Black and Red Circles, 2024, and McNeil’s poetic leaning Long View, Land and Sea, 2024.

Otis Jones, “Red Oxide with Black and Red Circles,” 2024, acrylic on canvas on wood, 49 × 58 1/5 × 5 inches

In Jones’ earthy-colored painting, he stresses both the surface sensuality and the heftiness of the painting as an object — placing equal value upon the corporeal and the pictorial. The whole structure appears as a wobbly sculpture made by a field painter. The worn rusty red painting contains black and cadmium red circles that are touching the bottom edge of the canvas as if gravity has forced them to tumble to the bottom. These marks punctuating the surface might be interpreted as flat pupils or game balls affixed to the bottom of a container. The rudimentary round shapes also evoke the parts of a small plastic children’s toy where tiny marbles are meant to be maneuvered around barriers. Both of Jones’ dots are solidly painted on the rubbed and sanded surface heightening the sensuality of paint as a material. But this frontal view of the artwork is just the initial experience: from a side viewing one can see hundreds of staples puncturing a pastel green of underpainting. The orientation of the staples interacts with the lines streaked and glued haphazardly along the sandwich of wood roughly affixed together. There is also a large gap between the front panels and the ones anchoring the work to the wall. All these fascinating idiosyncrasies make the whole piece feel like a rough-hewn mechanism for something larger; it’s like the painting shape is an outsized and fumbling rendition of an instrument found inside an old watch.

Marcelyn McNeil, “Long View (Land and Sea),” 2024, ink and oil on canvas, 75 x 65 inches

In McNeil’s case, her large vertical painting is more regular in its presentation. At first examination, it appears as a robust call and response between poured paint and geometric solidity. It’s clear that the artist is using the addition of hard-edged shapes to smartly heighten the beauty of the overlapping semi-transparent showers and blips flowing across the canvas. But like Jones, McNeil is playing multiple games at once. As the title indicates the work should not only be read as pure abstraction — upon closer scrutiny this intriguing painting is coyly referencing the land, sea, and sky. What’s so impressive about McNeil’s painting is how effortless and controlled each mark feels. The landscape referents seem to be discovered in McNeil’s process of making, yet each mark feels utterly inevitable — like it was always there from the beginning, only to be modified by the rectangular bands of calibrated color bookending either side of the painting. There are no gaps in the work; everything is in its place, without feeling overdetermined or stodgy. McNeil’s elegant style of using paint breathes an effervescent spaciousness to every moment, including her careful combinations of charcoal blue blacks, creamy tan, and a richly mixed pink. The addition of the smooth color bands running along the edges not only orchestrates our eyes around the entire painting but flip-flops our viewing of the work between flat and recessional space. We stay on the surface observing an even uniformity and then we’re suddenly pulled out of this reverie to enter into a grayish slightly desolate world. McNeil is also clever with how she deploys a host of repetitions within the spare painting. Most curious is how the overcast open expanse found in the center of the artwork is mirrored by the top portion of the painting, echoing the ground/sky equation. 

Both these beguiling paintings prove that simplicity is more powerful when undergirded by subtle complexity. Perhaps this is the fundamental link between Jones’ artwork and McNeil’s’ — both meet genre expectations while simultaneously subverting a plain and superficial reading. Each artist in their own way has created a painting that has a believable and succinct presence. Their paintings are sometimes beautiful, sometimes foreboding, but always demanding of us to pay attention to contradictions, nuances, and maybe even grandeur.

Otis Jones / Recent Work was on view at Barry Whistler Gallery from October 12- November 23.
Marcelyn McNeil’s Awash is on view at Conduit Gallery through November 30.