"Ecstatic Landscape' at the Gershman Y

Charles Burchfield believed in ecstatic landscapes; in this show three very different artists— Susan Pasquerelli, Peter Kinney and Helen Mirkil— respond to Burchfield's vision. This isn't to say that they attempt to copy him in a slavish (and ultimately pointless) manner. What they see in Burchfield differs according to temperament.

Mirkil, in her artist's statement, declares that "Painting outside is an ecstatic experience," and so she pays tribute to Burchfield's uncanny attention to the sounds of nature. Mirkil believes, like Burchfield, that art involves a certain aural component. She has 12 small landscapes in oil on display, and there's a certain lyrical "looseness" to her work that actually reminded me more of Soutine's landscape paintings than Burchfield's watercolors.

In Mirkil works like Cloud Feathers and Little Balloons we can detect an undeniable sense of visual art aspiring to the state of music, while Mrs. Wright's House is a more solid, down-to-earth painting. Still Radiance, with its water reflections, is perhaps the most visually complex of Mirkil's paintings.

Susan Pasquerelli is represented by six watercolors that seem organized around themes of "spiritual regeneration" and the "energies of nature." She seems most attuned to Burchfield-as-colorist and as nature mystic. You have to be on the same page as Pasquerelli to get the most out of her work; otherwise it's just an assortment of pleasing colors, nicely arranged.

Peter Kinney certainly has the show's most unique work. He has contributed seven pieces executed in "found earths": coal dust and acrylics. An eight-piece work is actually executed on the gallery floor in the manner of a sand-mandala. I assume that this piece won't survive the show's closing. Also on display is a video in which Kinney explains his work and his techniques.

I for one am happy to see that Charles Burchfield still inspires painters to embrace nature and the "finer sense of things unseen" as inspirations for their art.