Artist Takes Abstract Trip

They’re abstractions, but still connected to something in the real world. Even without knowing the original inspiration, the signs are there. The blue the artist, Judy Atlas, has chosen is one that occurs in nature, in the sky and water. The pristine white a common color in manmade structures around the world. Then there are the architectural features, the arches and doorways, that suggest something of a maze, but one you might want to get lost in.

Mykonos 2 and Mykonos 3 are part of ​“Abstractions,” an exhibition of works by Atlas running now at City Gallery on Upper State Street through Sept. 29. As the title implies, the show focuses on Atlas’s abstract work, and three distinct ways she goes about it. ​“Representational abstraction has a reference to physical reality — a person, place, or thing. The artist’s goal is to reduce the subject to its essence. The painting may or may not be recognizable to the viewer,” Atlas writes in a personal statement. ​“Nonrepresentational abstraction is a more intuitive approach and process. It involves exploration and discovery. The process goes one step at a time until you reach a satisfying resolution. The artist has a chance to improvise and the painter can be more expressive and free.”

The show has examples of both, with a third approach nestled inside one of them. Some of the paintings take their inspiration from ​“the islands in Greece, where the incredible beauty of the blue sea and sky contrast with the stark white stucco buildings dotting the landscape.” Others are collages pieced together from other paintings and monotype prints Atlas made, ​“to reconstruct new images from old” in nonrepresentational fashion. Finally, a third group of paintings ​“explore the process of using line, color, shape, and texture to intuitively create a conversation between what is on the canvas and what is to come.”

Atlas’s collages, as the artist suggests, push the sense of abstraction further than the Mykonos paintings do. But they’re not a depiction of chaos, either. Right angles, created by pieces of the collage, impose some order, a sense of proportion and geometry. Atlas may not be working from a real-world example that imposes restrictions, but she imposes rules all the same, and in doing so, creates a compelling balance between the elements of the paintings that lean toward order and those that do not.

It’s left to the third group of paintings — those that seek to ​“create a conversation between what is on the canvas and what is to come” — to show what happens when Atlas removes the constraints that the collage materials impose. In Keep On Dancing, the kinetic elements in the collages are given free rein, and the result is a kinetic, almost frantic canvas, a long way from the collages and even longer from the Mykonos series. Atlas’s comment about these paintings suggest that overtly kinetic paintings are an avenue she will keep exploring in paintings and shows to follow. The show as a whole reveals Atlas as an artist who, decades into her practice, is still expanding her definitions of what’s possible with paint and still improving her craft in exploring those possibilities. Atlas is still following those lines and colors wherever they may take her, as ready as ever to see where the conversation goes.

“Abstractions” runs through Sept. 29 at City Gallery, 994 State St. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.