Allyson Clay

Documenting the artist's first solo Canadian exhibition, a discussion of Clay's work within 1980's resurgence of painting and the criticism of figuration. Emphasizing the approach-avoidance conflict to the cultural and political issues in contemporary painting, the author traces the work's evolution from early experiments in conceptual theory and traditional colour, through narrative figurative paintings, to the series of this exhibition, in which landscape references and anthropomorphic abstraction replace the figure. Biographical notes. 8 bibl. ref