Jarrett Earnest reviews the recent exhibition Josphine Halvorson: Facings at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Earnest writes: "Halvorson’s paint is polysemic, it flutters between itself and the cement or mud or dust or soot or weathered house paint that it depicts, that it is. And in a deep way they really are these things. At the same time, the painting’s surface is buttery layers of low-relief marks, showing that they are brushstrokes too. Far from the cool colors of dispassionate observation, her nuanced palate is a study in simmered grays and burnished creams, velvety blacks and mottled roses—the kinds of colors warmed by the sunlight of affection. Halvorson’s paintings are not about 'nostalgia' or the charm of rustic things, but about things that are part of human lives and become Real, that become living extensions of us."