Charles Burchfield was an artist who made lush, evocative, dare I say it, pretty paintings. But why are they so resonant? It feels like something is pulling at his trees from the bottom and top of the canvas, stretching them, that the colors he chose were not on the nose, that the scenes he depicted were drawn from reality and yet other-worldly. My mother, who was a Sunday-ish but accomplished painter did some work mostly influenced by him, and she was able to carry over this attenuated sensation. The retrospective I saw at the Hammer some years ago has stayed with me. I often see Burchfields for sale at tony art fairs as they do belong oddly enough on Park Avenue as much as Main Street, so elegant are his renderings.

Carol Rama was very much her own person and her own artist, but I could not help but be reminded of Alberto Burri when I saw her work. Both repurposed discarded materials in their canvases (Rama: syringes, tires; Burri: war cast-offs, plastics and sheet metals) making not-quite-paintings, not-quite-sculptures, emerging then with a third dynamic way of bricolage. Unlike Burri, she had little recognition until the end of her life: her work challenged erotic and gender norms. Rama’s current show at Levy Gorvy also includes Egon Schiele-esque delicate, erotic watercolors and pen and ink drawings which do not seem as if they could not have come from the same much more abrasive fount. "I didn't think I had the qualities for becoming an artist," she once said. "Beautiful women, prima donnas, beautiful people who speak several different languages, sitting and being charming.”