Over the past two decades, Weld has become known for a primal, gestural abstraction composed of rich, impastoed color (though one might see the New York School as an antecedent, it is no accident, I think, that she is represented in New York by Robert Steele, who is an expert on Aboriginal painting).

.....The Vertebrae Continuo series seems almost chaste. The white ground surrounding Weld’s rubbed forms gives the works a lucidity and immediacy that recalls Joan Mitchell’s paintings from the nineties, with their super white grounds. But unlike Mitchell’s paintings, Weld’s are born of a slow, almost geological process that begins with oil paint and cold wax applied with a palette knife, over which subsequent layers of oil stick are rubbed.

It would be presumptuous to say that Weld’s new paintings represent a breakthrough for her. They do, however, stand entirely on their own while achieving an effect similar to her multi-panel work. Instead of taut man-made fabric flush against a painted surface, the startling juxtaposition here is the pulsing, flamboyant form adrift in a sea–or better, a sun-bleached desert–of white. Nothing feels extraneous. These “pure” paintings are simultaneously commanding and effervescent, archaic and new.

Excerpt from the exhibition brochure, Recent Paintings from the Vertebrae Continuo Series, Robert Steele Gallery, 2005

Edith Newhall is a Philadelphia based art critic and a former staff writer for New York Magazine.