Oil Slick

A painter of semi-abstract, dream-like canvases in a style reminiscent of both Paul Klee and American Magic Realist painters of the 1950s, Loren MacIver was always attuned to the uniqueness of place, whether it was the expanse of landscape or the minutia of the city street. She has had major one-person exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, the Phillips Collection, and the Orange County Museum of Art. In 1962 she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. While verging on abstraction, MacIver’s paintings are often grounded in reality. Though her paintings are reality-based, they are filtered through a poetic sensibility. She enjoyed evoking the subtleties of visual experience: the arcs of windshield wipers on a rainy night, a cracked window blind, her studio skylight. "Oil Slick" looks abstract, but the title and the context of MacIver's attention to the subtle details of everyday experiences tell us otherwise. MacIver's lifelong fascination with the way beauty emanates from the commonplace is fully articulated in this poetic work. Employing feathery brushstrokes, the artist renders the rainbow effect produced when motor oil encounters a curb-side puddle.