Steven Alexander visits the exhibition Kazimira Rachfal: The Shiva Cycle at Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, New York, on view through April 22, 2012.

Alexander writes that Rachfal's works are "spare and deeply evocative paintings… Employing an iconic motif — a rectangle with a slightly curved angular top, contained in varying ratios by a solid field and the edges of the canvas — the artist explores the nuances of proportion, touch and color. The surfaces vary from impasto to thin veils of oil, arrived at through a long slow intuitive layering process that leaves traces of each previous action."