Lipsky’s “Wave” paintings are exuberant, vivid, and fresh. They are, by necessity, painted in one shot: acrylic on unprimed canvas, with color bands in loose wave formations that dissolve into drips and splatters at the edges. The images do not extend to the canvas’s perimeter but rather float in empty space.

The exhibition represents a unique opportunity to reflect on Lipsky’s significant contribution to the modes of Color Field Painting, and her highly successful exhibitions at André Emmerich Gallery between 1970–1975. Yet it also explores the full circle of an artist today making new work in conversation with a high point of her past.

Lipsky has reflected on this exhilarating period of time, 1969–1971:  

“I got a studio on 11th Street. I loved going down there. I would stop at Chock Full o'Nuts and get two coffees to go. The paintings from the night before would be lying on the floor. I’d climb on top of the ladder and look down at them. I remember the smell and the feel of the canvas. I have never been happier. I’d see how the paintings looked, whether I’d been on or off the day before. Then I’d hang them up on the wall, and see how they looked up. Then I’d tack some new canvas onto the floor and start working. The canvas would be blank, just like a big piece of white paper on the floor. I’d sponge the whole thing down with water. Then I’d start pouring color onto the canvas. I had these wonderful silk cosmetic sponges of different sizes that I’d collected. I’d dance, I’d play, I’d rub.”

Lipsky’s description of her process is indeed sensuous: the smells, the feelings, the movements between painter and painting. The resulting works do not refer to specific things or places, even with titles like Firefly and Wooster, but they are about the physicality and pleasure of their making, and the interactions that occur, between water, color, and cotton duck, and the beauty that results at these meeting-points. Hers is a process that balances intuition and spontaneity with a more measured approach, as she stands back to survey what has been made, and only then decides where the edges of the painting will be.

Lipsky has been called “an unrepentant abstract painter.” She has said that her goal as an artist is “getting an image that resonates, that has some magic to it, that creates an aura. It’s that ‘there it is’ feeling in the painting. Really, it’s not something you can put into words. If you could, you wouldn’t have to paint it.”

One of Lipsky’s closest friends in the art world was the critic Clement Greenberg. Lipsky related to and respected the rigor of Greenberg’s discerning eye and his objectivity in questions of taste. Lipsky remains steadfast in her belief that beauty and “an expression of rightness” (Mark Rothko’s term)—created by the right color relations and compositional organization—are primary to painting. Lipsky met Greenberg at André Emmerich in the 1960s and reconnected with him in the 1970s when he was lecturing at Bennington College and she was living in Hoosick Falls, NY, near the Vermont border. They remained friends throughout his life, engaged in lively conversations—Greenberg frequenting Lipsky’s studio, sharing ideas and pithy expressions that Lipsky savored. In a poignant New Criterion article that serves as a memoir of their friendship, Lipsky writes:

"It occurs to me now that, so far, Clem himself has not stood the test of time. I seem to be the only person still talking about him. It’s like I’m standing on the shore, and the boat that is the art world is way, way off in the distance. No one has replaced him—not in New York and not for me. Clem is the only person I’ve ever known who stood for something."

Lipsky’s work has been widely exhibited and is represented in public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, NY; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.