Alice Dalton Brown
Fischbach
Alice Dalton Brown's 12 gentle paintings here, of the sea as viewed from a window, contained a universe of feelings. Aegean (2009), rendered in a shimmering palette of blues and warm earth tones, seems to capture an eternal moment, in which waves ripple across the water and a breeze lifts the window's sail-like diaphanous curtain. You can almost smell and taste the salty air. Brown leads us away from the concerns of the world and to this simple place, where sky and sea meet and days pass without interruption.

These harmonious paintings moved from morning to night, starting with Above the Sea (2009), in which a glowing white sun leaves a trail of light across the water and lends the flowing curtains the appearance of glass. In Morning Lilies (2010), the delicate stems of flowers just outside the window bend in the wind, and their orange tips glitter like bits of gold. Brown shows us more of the serene room from which she gazes in Quite Window (2008), where the walls are the color of water and a garden of pink flowers resides just beyond.

Night falls in Moondrops (2010), whit the sky now deep blue and the water pale with moonlight. Nocturne (2009), in which the curtains are still, was the most peaceful of all, as soothing as a Chopin piece. The utter beauty of the paintings is such that it takes a bit of time to see Brown's skillful sense of composition and attention to detail.

– Valerie Gladstone, ARTnews, Summer 2010