VENTURING OUTSIDE THE AREA >>>

Go north, art lovers, to the Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle's Freemont neighborhood, the Center of the Universe. And check out the Juan Alonso paintings in the upstairs gallery.

Francine Seders is one of the oldest and most respected galleries in Seattle. They handle such outstanding artists as Marita Dingus and Robert C. Jones, and the Spaffords - Michael and Spike. But it is Alonso with whom I have been most impressed lately, thanks to some images posted on Facebook.

He's been around for a long time, but I suspect his latest work is, at least, his breakout work.

My first contact with Alonso was back in 1988 when he was co-owner of the Alonso Sullivan Gallery, which hosted a juried art show that I happened to be in. After that I heard that he moved to Miami and then later back to Seattle. Throughout the years since then I have periodically run into various incarnations of his paintings in shows at the Tacoma Art Museum. I've always thought he was an interesting artist, but his paintings never exactly kicked me into the stratosphere. And then they did.

He posted some images of his latest paintings on Facebook, and they were unlike any of his previous works - or any that I had seen. They were paintings that nicely combined elements of Abstract Expressionism with what was call hard edge abstraction. They were striped painting, horizontal stripes of a single color alternating light and dark, flat color areas with definite edges; but sloppily painted with drips and splatters and not the "no-hand-of-the-artist" look normally associated with hard edge abstraction. The stripes were bent sharply in the middle giving them the look of window blinds if someone had reached up and pulled down a few of the slats in the middle as if to peek out. The resulting feeling was one of vertigo. The surfaces, even in photographic reproductions (I've not yet had the opportunity to see them in person) had a lush and creamy look. In short, I loved them.

Just within the last few days Alonso has posted images of another series of paintings that comprise groups of rectangular shapes with the same kind of lush surface quality.

Judging from his website and the Francine Seders site, he also continues to make paintings in an older style. They are mostly floral shapes in black and white and tones of gray that that have the iconic look of heraldic symbols or crests or relief ornamentation on old buildings. I had seen a few of these before, and I've had a hard time getting used to them. They're not as impressive as the more colorful striped and geometric paintings, but they're beginning to grow on me.

There's a personal reason for liking these so much. They remind me of paintings by New York artist Thornton Willis who was my mentor and studio mate almost 50 years ago. Their paintings share the same quality of minimalist or almost-minimalist geometric abstraction with the gesture and texture of Abstract Expressionism. Those two, Willis and Alonso, are the only painters I've ever known to paint in quite that way (with the possible exceptions of Sean Scully). It's a kind of painting that offers huge challenges to the artist, and they both meet those challenges beautifully.

FRANCINE SEDERS GALLERY, MARCH 8-31, 6701 GREENWOOD AVE. N., SEATTLE, 206.782.0355