Blart

This is an unfair reproduction twice removed from the original. The black-and-white palette turns the picture hirsute, into a collage of cowlicks. Or into some maniacally cut, expensive diamond spotlighted on black velvet. The color reproduction is better: red, pink, green, blue, purple, and yellow. But it looks sharp, like op art or one of those brainteasers in which a hockey player or a knight-errant will jump out of a shape field if you stare long enough. The real painting is 5-by-5 1/2 feet. Its shapes are thick, wet, and brushy. Each is its own tiny expressionistic island. In groups, they form small, forever-mutating scenes, like what your eye might make out if everything was stacked on top of everything else in a furniture warehouse. This artist, a professor at Reed College, studied at UW in the 1970s and made paintings of lawn chairs. They’re still in there, if you look for them. JEN GRAVES