Ben Wiedel-Kaufmann reviews two concurrent exhibitions of paintings by Pete Hoida: The Black Morar Series 2010-2012 at The Museum in the Park, Stroud and Pete Hoida: Paintings 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, 00’s at St Mary of the Angels, Brownshill, Stroud (both through July 7, 2013).

Wiedel-Kaufmann writes: "Caught up in the backlash against Greenbergian aesthetics, a tendency to ‘bridge the gulf between the ardent spirituality of the Abstract Expressionists… and the over-cool design-conscious aesthetic of the post painterly generation’ has been read all too frequently as historical anachronism, formalist dogma or outmoded stagnation. Hoida’s work reminds us of the fallacy of such dismissals. Whilst Hoida no doubt establishes a dialogue with mid-century American painting – from the formal and gestural concerns of the Abstract Expressionists through to the surface treatments of Frankenthaler, Olitski and Poons – it is the wealth of visual propositions and the vivacity of the pictorial incidents carried in the work that accounts for its power."