The "ashes of roses" color of the hydrangea bordering the bluestone walk that leads to the entrance of the Inn at Stone Ridge (Hasbrouck House) is an apt introduction to the exhibition Works on Paper by Kathleen McGuiness.

The contrast between everyday utensils laid in a schoolboy row for dining and McGuiness' edgy lines and frail color in her pen-and-ink drawings and subtle watercolors meld in a complexity of planes. A shift of body weight reveals another view... another country entirely. Move 10 inches left, and you've walked into a different picture while still tethered to the first. McGuiness writes, "The process of creativity is in living and in growing, a kind of a Zen-like place."

"Love for the Soul" is a marvelous example of McGuiness' absorption with the human body and its placement within the furniture of the painting. A strong-limbed woman with the head and face of a caryatid sits in a drape of beryl blue on a deeply orange couch. The rounded still-lifes of avocado pears, full melons of sensual ripeness amid a tight cluster of brilliantly-hued stones, illustrate McGuiness' great gift of contriving solid, three-dimensional objects on a flat surface.

"Union' with the Other" is a large oil painting of billowing white clouds of a chiffon and taffeta gown, a lacy architecture of crocheted frills surrounding rosy-brown shoulders of a classic russet-haired goddess. Glass bottles of blue and aquamarine and a cluster of magnolias in the upper right corner lead the eye into the lush landscape that can be contained within a dress. This painting exemplifies McGuiness' statement, "...I consider myself an Expressionist. My love of drawing the figure has been a continuing passion for more than 30 years. 'The classical approach is the basis of my work, offering stability to my freedom of color and line... The viewer cannot help but think of Gainsborough's portrait of a Regency lady stepping down a stair in pale grey satin at the Metropolitan Museum– the articulated bone beneath the silk.

McGuiness' 'I Will Remember You' is a masterwork containing first-rate elements of composition, perspective and color. It shows a half nude, full-bodied woman melting into an exotic woven chair with a strongly-doweled back, her lavender-tinted arm lazily draped over the top. The upper strata of the painting features a classically shaped, large, tarnished bowl, perfectly balanced to hold up the picture even if the sky should fall.

Another quite beautiful work is "A Dream in Libra," where a woman sleeps amid Turkish embroidered cushions and encrusted, jeweled drapery. All the colors of summer fruit enrich this picture.

McGuiness stresses, "Creating should have no completion." Her work confirms this ideal in many ways.

The Woodstock Times, September 21, 2000