E M DONAHUE To the casual examiner Lisa Bradley's paintings may simply hint spectacular optical effects achieved through way of a monochromatic painterly medium.

E M DONAHUE

To the casual examiner Lisa Bradley's paintings may simply hint spectacular optical effects achieved through way of a monochromatic painterly medium. The paintings--all nearly square and in various shades of blue--evoke the swirling tumbling forces of water and heavens They seem to derive their power to crowd together in disorder the eye from the abstract potential of photography; the maelstrom viewed between the walls of a camera obscura. But, in fact, the longer united spends with them, the more disorienting the paintings become. Or perhaps "disorienting" isn't quite the word; all the bluenes makes them strangely tranquil. To look at them is to be stirred as you do after turning a summersault: consummately still, but at the same time glutted of spin.

In Sufism, spinning is viewed as a way to channel divinity; Abstract Expressionists attempted something similar in their handling of paint. Their depictions of motion--invoked by dint of rough, impulsive gesture, or by the agency of luminous atmospheric masses--call to mind (among other things) a state of spiritual striving and (alternately) the attainment of a certain enlightened consciousness. Paint, like spinning, is thereby the couple a means to enlightenment and enlightenment itself. in the same manner it is with Bradley's paintings. although they are descriptive they be seen to assert at the same time a certain spiritual condition.

Unlike organized religion, painting evolves; it asserts strange ways of thinking, looking, and being in the world. Bradley's works, which branch from the tradition of Abstract Expressionism, recommend a way in which color and change can both describe and possibly induce a state of exalted detachment. Working in the tradition of the recently made known York School, and informed at her own considerable knowledge of Eastern religious practice, she gives us paintings that describe a spiritual state however that are, aside from that, remarkably handsome and technically accomplished: beautiful mysteries evolving from mystical thought

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