Paul Kasmin Gallery

While painting has more than proved it won't disappear quietly, Puckette's particular brand of elegance occasionally still takes shots for being too "decorative." She says: "That's always been something I've had to speak up for. You have to be brave to try to make something beautiful."

To describe Elliott Puckette's new paintings and drawings at Earl Mcgrath Gallery is to speak contradictions. They are works of precise improvisation and controlled abandon...

ART HISTORY I have a deep connection to the grey painting here, called Ocoee, which is a river down south that my father, a great canoer, used to run. WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW? I've done some very big drawings on handmade paper, and paintings similar to Ocoee.

"It's one of my favorite houses anywhere," the filmmaker Wes Anderson tells me. "I wanted to film scenes for The Royal Tenenbaums in it, but it is too narrow, so we re-created it a few blocks away. We used Elliott's paintings and Hugo's prints and old metal garden furniture with the paint chipping off, and a washed-out whiteness across the whole place. They both have perfect taste," Anderson says. "And then on top of that is the fact that Elliotte is probably the best cook in the city"...

Elliott Puckette creates harmonious abstract paintings by superimposing disparate elements from different artistic universes. In each of these works (all 2002), a washy monochromatic ground has been marked with white whiplash lines. The color layer is painted on wood panels prepared with white gesso...

In a Zen variation on a grade-school art-class technique (scratching black-crayon-covered paper to reveal colors layered underneath), Puckette scratches ink-washed canvases to reveal layers of white...

The word "decorative" has carried a pejorative connotation in criticism ever since Clement Greenberg. What makes Elliott Puckette's drawings interesting is that, rather than integrate the decorative in a larger expressive purporse, the artist finds expressive purpose within the decorative itself...