Tom Prochaska: So You Say

 Tom Prochaska’s latest exhibition, So You Say, sees the longtime Portland artist entering his 77th year with this series of sublimely powerful semiabstract paintings. These works are, foremost, exercises in composition-finding, in which Prochaska moves color around on his surfaces, chasing a pleasing arrangement of elements. From a dense snowfall of white-shade brushstrokes, scumbled forms emerge in brick reds, mineral greens, pale pinks, lapis blues, or dense grays and blacks, to resolve into calm, mysterious landscapes and interior scenes. Figures are less apparent here than in his past work, reduced to a few vertical shapes when present, lending an heightened sense of solitude and of quiet observation. Prochaska’s titles - such as Wild Paint, Strange Weather, Who Knows, So Red, You What? - underline his open, searching process and the always-fresh, surprising experience of arriving at a completed painting.