
Siemon Scamell-Katz’s gloriously sheer, apparitional panels seem to exist in a space outside the conventionally pictorial while dwelling firmly within painterly tradition. You can see in them echoes of the skies of Turner, and of the subtle color fields of Ad Reinhardt. Like the works of those artists, they permit entry to themselves only to decenter viewerly expectation and suspend the gaze within a recessional of variations. Their abstract breadth derives from the singular purity of their focus. His muse is the seaside, his artistic temperament is devotional and his method is to build up layers of varnishes that replicate the experience of staring into deep seawater or at the serene circuits of clouds in the sky. These beautiful paintings are odes to the outdoor life of the eye.