With its simple harmony and elegant lines, much classic Asian art has been easy to digest but not to remember. This is its -- or rather, our -- struggle.

And so it is with the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens’ current exhibit, Kyoto: A Place in Art. As soon as we leave the exhibit, we’re in fear of forgetting what we’ve seen.

It doesn’t help that Kyoto: A Place in Art is not very exciting, at least not in the way that would require cool 3-D glasses. What is required of you is to empty your mind so it doesn’t interfere, for there is no way a show this quiet has a chance of being absorbed unless we forget for a minute -- more like an hour -- our busy modern lives.

The exhibit, which runs through Oct. 17, opens with a series of eight photographs by Haruzo Ohashi from the Morikami’s permanent collection. All of them feature sharp, beautiful images of temples, gardens and pavilions of relevant importance to a city that served as Japan's capital from 794 to 1868. Still, the images are far from unique.

Nature happens to be pretty extraordinary in these sites, so it is no surprise the photos take our breath away, particularly that of Kinkaku-Ji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion). This three-tiered Zen temple served as the retreat of retired shogun Yoshimitsu. Here it appears with its top floors completely covered in gold leaf and overlooking the famous pond, which functions more like a mirror. The building has had its share of tragedies having been burned down several times, the last time in 1950.

When not fusing with the outside world, the structures appear to have completely disappeared, as in Ohashi’s Shugaku-in (Imperial Villa: Winter), where a white and grayish veil of snow has taken over the print and left no chance for inner cheering. Thankfully, the autumn and the sunset photographs that accompany the winter piece lighten up our spirit with unbelievable intense colors. The sunset piece gets my attention with the curious line of trees that look as if strategically placed next to one another.

Notably missing from this trio is a spring season photograph, which one can only imagine would be impregnated with cherry blossoms. There are no humans depicted in any of the photos, leading us to wonder whether humanity and these glorious places can really coexist.

The presence of swords, spears and folding screens is not enough to get a mood going. I can’t help thinking that having Japanese melodies or Zen music playing in the background would have helped. Unlike tea ceremony and koi feeding, which set a particular mood, the show doesn’t seem to transmit much. This is perhaps intentional, as to leave room for inward reflection.

If that’s the case, the best place to cleanse the mind is by the woodblock paintings depicting rock gardens: Sekitei and Ryoan-ji. Each of the seven works, ranging in date from 1960 to 2001 and by seven different artists, gives us a personal interpretation of these famous dry landscapes, also known as Zen gardens.

Painters such as Toshi Yoshida, son of the great Hiroshi Yoshida, were considered sosaku hanga artists, meaning they engaged in every aspect of the woodblock painting creative process: designing, carving, printing and publishing. His Sekitei, dated 1963, is the warmest depiction of the garden in the show.

Following it is an unexpected geometric composition titled Ryoan-ji, Kyoto by Kiyoshi Saito. It’s rather Pollockian compared to the rest in the sense that the work is more concerned with free expression and experimentation than with retention of form. For instance, although Saito’s figures are still clearly defined, he has placed circles instead of realistic-looking rocks and given each a different texture. Next to the other pieces here, which are more tri-dimensional and play with angles and shadows, Saito’s primitive take on the rock garden seems very flat but yet fresh and unique.

A scroll right before the woodblock pieces titled Fishing in Autumn is the piece I like the most. Hine Taizan gives us the scholar turning to seclusion and isolation to reconnect with his inner self. Here he appears inside a boat but is not in a rush. The piece isn’t about anxiety or urgency, but rather a man making a quiet exit out of the social and political life.

When we reach the pair of six-panel folding screens we sort of sense the presence of something important, even when we cannot fully understand it. Think of them as visual narratives, starting from right to left. The screens, dating from the Edo period, 17th or 18th century, are meant to portray the life of the various social classes in Kyoto. Too bad that the glass wall protecting them prevents us from taking a closer look at the tiny figures. Don’t be shy about using the description to identify the important sites on the panels.

You will find the striking dance platform of the Kiyomizu-dara temple (top of the fifth panel on right screen) and, right below it, the Great Buddha Hall distinguished by a bright orange hue and a green roof. The overall view reveals black outlines dancing, meditating, fishing and carrying baskets. Bridges of different sizes connect the top section with the middle and the bottom sections of the panels while members of the imperial court make their way to Nijo Castle.

On your way out, before the countdown toward forgetfulness begins and while your mind is still fresh with images, find comfort in the fact that perhaps it isn’t meant for you to remember this show after all. You don’t need to retain all the details, nor are you expected to give your friends a lecture on what you learned during this visit.

After all, in Zen, learning and knowledge should be open and free from practical use as skills; knowledge for its own sake is sufficient. In other words, enjoy, and don’t worry about giving your visit a later purpose.

Kyoto: A Place in Art is showing at the Morikami Museum through Oct. 17 along with Kaiju! Monster Invasion!, an exhibit of toys based on Japanese monster movies. For more information, call 561-495-0233 or visit www.morikami.org.

Entering Beyond the Figure at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, one enters a darkened gallery in which strange forms emerge from the shadows. Although artifacts from our own culture, these forms also point toward a parallel universe — a realm where we understand and know objects with all our senses and our imaginations.

The roughly 20 sculptural works on view do not depict recognizable subjects, so each viewer is left to search for other clues to unlock their mysteries. One gains a deep appreciation for the materiality of each work, encountering objects that are tactile, physical, and irresistible.

These sculptures are remarkably rooted. While the forms are mysterious, the materials and fabrication are amazingly familiar and recognizable. The works invite engagement because they exist in the same space that viewers occupy, giving the curious visitor both physical and visual access to them. This literal access facilitates intellectual access, offering opportunities to spend time appreciating each work.

As the light rakes across the surfaces of the pieces, each step of the creative process is revealed. The smooth, seemingly bioluminescent curves of Dale Chihuly’s Macchia Forest (1994) float along one wall in dramatic contrast with the earthy, sullen crevasses of Ursula von Rydingsvard’s Bowl-in-a-Bowl (1999). As one moves through the galleries, the mass, interest, and texture of each elegant and refined form are revealed.

Although the exhibition showcases a number of highly reduced, even austere objects, their physical presence, direct presentation, and thoughtful lighting make them endlessly engaging. Close inspection reveals the details of the joinery in Sol LeWitt’s 2 x 7 x 7 (1989). The brass spines of Harry Bertoia’s Sunburst III (1968) vibrate and shimmer with light and texture in the subtle meteorology of the gallery. Elsewhere, attentively carved wood transforms into a voluptuous puddle at the base of Toshio Odate’s Suspended Column Melting (1974).

Allan McCollum’s Ninety-Six Plaster Surrogates No. 4 (1982/89) and John McCracken’s Black Plank (1974) are examples of the simplified abstractions in the exhibition. This work creates ambiguities for viewers to consider. Beyond the Figure offers an enormous amount of space, both the physical space of the gallery and intellectual space, space into which viewers — as bodies and as thinkers — are able to project, imagine, and rewrite meaning.

McCollum’s work is an especially good example of this. This work is a seemingly endless number of blank, provisional, repeating forms. These framed gray rectangles are incomplete by their very design, inviting the viewer to complete them.

The strong physical presence of McCracken’s sculpture tempts viewers to assign an identity to this otherwise obscure object. The immense black slab becomes something relative to the viewer’s body, but its scale is just uncertain enough that it refuses to point directly to any referent in the world beyond the gallery. Instead, it has an insistent here-ness, demanding acceptance as it is.

Tension grows between its strong presence and its ambiguity, allowing one to push it in any number of directions while moving around it. If only I could be under it, it could be a shelter. There might be just enough space behind it for me to use it as a door. It might be flush enough against this wall to be part of the wall itself. It might be just narrow enough for me to dance with it as if it were another body.

Joel Shapiro’s Untitled (1985) is arguably more familiar, precisely scaled to the human figure. Forms are cantilevered as if the sculpture were bending at the waist like one of Edgar Degas’ dancers. Although not obviously figural, these rectilinear forms appear to locomote as if human. This familiarity tests the limits of one’s ability to empathize with objects that might otherwise seem distant or blank. This kind of abstraction is so pared down that the objects themselves become invitations to enter into a sensory and contemplative relationship with them.

These are incredibly quiet forms, ones that might easily be overlooked in other contexts. Presented together in this exhibition, installed as they are in the company of one another, all this quiet mystery invites — and rewards — careful inspection and patient appreciation.

Amy Broderick is an artist, writer, and professor. She is currently associate professor of drawing and painting at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. She regularly exhibits and delivers lectures about her work locally and nationally. Visit her at www.amybroderick.com.

Beyond the Figure: Abstract Sculpture in the Norton Museum Collection runs through Sept. 5 at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach. For more information, call 832-5136 or visit www.norton.org.

I have never been a fan of having artists explain their work with their own words, but with a show as diverse as the 59^th Annual All Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition it might just prove useful.

The competition, the oldest of its kind, gives new and established artists residing in the state a chance to expose their work. Of about 1,400 entries submitted this year, 92 works by 81 artists were selected. Juror Linda Norden, who has taught at Yale University and Columbia and served as the first curator of contemporary art at the Harvard Art Museum/Fogg Museum, did the picking. The works, representing painting, photography, sculpture and video, are now showing on the ground floor of the Boca Raton Museum of Art until Aug. 8.

On opening night, four awards were given to the four artists behind the most intriguing pieces, such as a 24-minute video of an orange being sewn back together after being peeled (the end result looking like an orange baseball) and an installation of various kinds of chairs in front of the museum.

But more awards should have been handed out. After all, an art show derived from a competition should praise not only the shocking and the beautiful but also the childish, the absurd and the meaningful, along with the new and the old.

And so it is that here we get the traditional self-portrait, the striking landscape, the photographed orchid, the window sweating with raindrops and the incomprehensible sculpture, which here comes in the form of a dirty mirror and flag mount titled Err, by Tom Scicluna of Miami. An error would be a nice way to describe it. Less sympathetic viewers might call it a joke, an insult.

There are also humorous pieces that don’t pretend to be serious, such as Dagwood, a tall hamburger that greets us at the beginning. It is by John Pack, an artist from Fort Lauderdale currently busy with creating sculptures of food from materials collected from Florida beaches. Here, seashells, coral debris and minerals give the illusion of lettuce, tomato, meat and bread.

The fun continues as you go on, toward the left, and two primate ladies strike a pose. Both are wearing floral dresses, black gloves and fashionable hats. They have that mean/serious look models usually adopt for the runway. The one to the right, also the tallest one, is wearing lipstick. She nails the feminine look that her friend, on the left, can’t pull off despite the ornaments. This is Fashion Evolution I, by Delray Beach artist Jean Hutchison. Having seen it, I now can’t think of fashion seriously.

The first photographs of the show appear on the opposite wall facing the primate ladies. There are four of them on the wall, and yet Cypress Harvest-Reaching Out seems to me to be the only one. Wellington photographer Allison Parssi has chosen to depict only a part of the subjects, and not the face, or the eyes or the legs. We see hands, in action, and not a violent one for a change, but rather performing the natural instinctive act of reaching out. The hands seem to perform this motion so easily, and in the abstract sense, it reminds us that asking for help, coming closer, reaching out, saying a word, is only human.

Another photo that, again, asks more than answers is Dream Walking, by photographer Jim LaRocco of Highland Beach. Imagine typing “girl” into a Google image search and getting in return a really bad result. That’s what this is: a blurry image not even of an entire figure, just a segment of a girl. LaRocco’s wears a black short skirt, black shoes and black socks up to right below the knee. We are right behind her although we don’t know where she is heading. We are not even sure she knows she is being followed. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but the image retains our attention longer than the real version of the event would. This is the power of photography: to give mundane every-day acts a second chance at being noticed and considered even beautiful.

But as much as I like LaRocco’s photo, it is My Father, by Kim Kuhn of Port Orange that is my personal favorite of the show. Humble in size, this piece is like a secret: unique and yet universal, like one’s individual story of discovering the truth about Santa Claus or having sex for the first time. It depicts Kuhn’s father in a dark hotel room. He is sitting on the end of the bed facing a closed curtain from where a shirt hangs. We can’t see his face. Shoes rest under the bed and a roll of paper towels is on the table.

The man is either meditating or watching television. It’s not sad because it shows a sad father. It’s sad because it’s a reduced father, a human one, and it’s real. This is Kuhn’s father after “the divorce,” reads the description, and it goes on to say that “there comes a point at which the perception of a parent transitions from unsurpassable being to mere mortal. Inevitably, I’ve learned to accept the fact that parents are not devoid of flaws.” His photo is whispering: Parents are fragile beings, but shhh … don’t tell anyone.

When it comes to painting, small is sometimes better, as in the case of Hamptons Room, a 14-by-11-inch oil with lots of emotion and energy. The lack of action is compensated for by the impulsive/aggressive strokes taking over the bed and suitcase depicted. In this painting, by Natalya Laskis of Miami, it’s not color that gives life to the canvas, but the thick visible strokes.

Close by, on another bed, sits a nude woman. She is refined, slender and beautiful. One wonders if her brain is as sharp as her jaw. The colored, stripped bedsheets reflect on her pale skin. The bed looks done. It’s not certain whether she is going or coming. And the fact that both of her hands concentrate on her right ear doesn’t explain anything, except that the task of putting on/taking off an earring is a tricky one. The bed is by Carolyn Schlam of Miami Shores, and should have gotten a prize just for creating something that feels new with traditional materials and approach.

The idea of arriving at “new” through “old” ways brings us to another piece in the right side of the room. It’s easy to distinguish because of its contrasting dark colors: red and blue. To touch a rising hero, by Maria Sonia Martin of Miami, has a certain innocence to it. It seems to have escaped the laws and principles of art to give us a simple, child-like piece in which subtle variations of blue are the only signs of sophistication. A child reaches up to touch a creature, a dog or a horse, above him. Half of his body is red. The other half is blue. Same goes for the animal. One will fade faster into the background. Will it be the creature that loses its dreamer? Or is the child who will lose its dream?

The darkest of the pieces is right by the end of the show, and like rising hero, it’s more concerned with expression. Sight, by Cecilia Bedin of Weston, is mostly a dance of blacks and white that inevitably turns gray at times, and surprises with a touch of purple and green and orange lines. I personally call these types of pieces “unafraid abstraction.” You can tell them apart from the “afraid” ones because they contain and project lots of emotion as opposed to feeling flat.

Going after the M.C. Escher effect was Pamela Fessel of Vero Beach, with Florida Gator Fairy, a fine piece with an incredible amount of detail that really pushes the artistic abilities of that old friend of civilization: the pencil. In Fessel’s piece, a thin brunette fairy sits by the gator’s nostrils and caresses or heals its thick skin. They blend in with the dense vegetation so well that, if we are not careful, they might disappear right before our eyes.

The good news about the show is that there is no right or wrong way to go about seeing it. The works being shown are in no particular order, which makes it more exciting, less predictable. Photography appears next to oil painting, small pieces share the same wall with huge ones, and self-portraits are followed by abstractions. One thing seems common among the pieces. They are more about what the artists feel and see rather than what they do and how they do it.

I found plenty of likable and relatable pieces, good creations that are not necessarily unique, and unique ideas that could have had better execution. But even those lacking skill don’t suffer, if we keep in mind that this is a show about purity of feeling, which can’t be taught, and not so much about technique, which can.

When not reduced to a still pile of bones, dinosaurs appear to us as skeletons trapped in glass cases. In two colors, usually: dark brown or white.

This summer, for three months, we can see them like never before. They play games, dance, sing, have their own alphabet and brush their teeth. They come in all colors: light and dark browns, grays, pinks.

Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney, running now through Sept. 5 at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, consists of more than 50 original oil paintings from Gurney’s illustrated books Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time (1992), Dinotopia: The World Beneath (1995), and Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (2007).

“It’s great for the kids and their imagination, but the quality of the works is so high it appeals to adults,” said Brianna Anderson-Guthrie, 24. Dinotopia is her first official show as main curator.

The storyline behind the pictures follows the experiences of Professor Arthur Denison and his son Will on a mysterious island where dinosaurs and shipwrecked travelers from all over the world live in harmony. The three rooms housing this exhibit show us dinosaurs that are very much alive and still evolving, in an artist’s mind.

An apatosaurus is a yellow school bus that stops at each house while officials use red-tasseled poles to stop ongoing traffic. A brachiosaurus’s long neck is used by firefighters as a ladder. A ceratosaurus with a big ego attempts to walk on stilts.

The struggle of convincing adults to dig his picture books, which are actually not children-level reading, are nothing compared to the kid-adult struggle inside us as we walk this show. We know none of this is real, but then again, why not? We rationalize it. We find it soothing, like a familiar lullaby.

Pieces such as Tuggle, featured on page 59 of the Chandara book, is one of many that steal that smile from us despite our conviction that this is a show for kids. In this game, where the first to fall to the ground loses, neither strength nor weight is a determining factor. Psychology is. A smaller player (in this piece, a blonde girl) can win by tricking a larger player (a dinosaur) into predicting a strong tug. Then a sudden release of tension will make the other fall backward. But in Gurney’s Tuggle, both players still look very determined to win. We can guess.

In the third room we find a nurturing oviraptor – once mistakenly thought by scientists to be egg thieves – cradling a dinosaur egg that needs to stay warm. A gentle and very warm piece, this is Outside the Hatchery (Warming the Eggs), an illustration from the Land Apart from Time book. In Dinotopia, most dinosaurs are born in the hatchery, where females go to lay their eggs in indoor nests.

Then there is Convoy Surrounded, an illustration for Dinotopia: The World Beneath. This is perhaps the most violent in the show, or at least less sweet than the other pictures. Turns out danger exists in Dinotopia, where going through tyrannosaurus lands is not exactly a picnic, hence the armor protecting the brachiosaur bus depicted here.

If bright abundant colors, slow movements and dreamy-like light reigned before, here everything changes. The light is quite dramatic and bright colors nonexistent, except for a touch of red on the left. The dinosaurs’ aggressive stance tells us a battle is inevitable. We can move on to happier pieces or imagine the outcome in our minds.

Even if drama lives here, it is still an ideal world, given to us by an idealizing artist.

“There are many places in Dinotopia I haven’t been to,” says Gurney, who lives in New York with his family.

He loves heading outside with a portable kit to observe the behavior of living things. He listens to classical music when painting skies and water. That mystical striking sky in the Waterfall City illustrations is probably connected to Mozart and Bach, two of Gurney’s favorite composers. Family members and neighbors play a role as his models. Sketching trips, such as the ones to Niagara Falls, Venice and the Grand Canyon, give illustrations like Dream Canyon a powerful realism and majestic presence. In Dinotopia, young pilots go to Dream Canyon to train to fly on gigantic winged pterosaurs, which are closely depicted in another fine piece titled Skybax Ryder.

Pterosaurs, known as skybax in Dinotopia, were the largest creatures ever to fly. Depicted in this 1992 illustration is young Will doing what many young pilots on the island dream of: flying. For us it’s great because of the simple atmospheric perspective it offers. The images in the distance appear blurred, which only makes Will appear scarily high up.

Light, however, is the hardest thing to invent for this California-born author/artist. His new book, which discusses color and light, will be released in the fall. To study forms and the effects of light from all points of view, he builds models and maquettes, one of which has never been shown before. Making its debut here is a model of Bix, the parrot-beaked protoceratops in Dinotopia that speaks many languages and is one of the main characters.

As Bix, Gurney’s creations do unimaginable things but look scientifically accurate.

As if to reinforce this point, the museum has borrowed fossil specimens from the Broward College Graves Museum Collection. An allosaurus claw cast, an anatotitan skull cast and a coelophysis skeleton cast share the first room with eight of his illustrations.

How do they compare to us? The fossils seem to be asking.

Well, those dinosaurs seem to be having more fun, for one. They come in all colors. They listen and move slowly and even cry.

Detailed enough to impress, light enough to entertain, Gurney has given the Norton what every museum might want to show, and not just in the summer: a visual lullaby for grown-ups, masked as a children’s attraction.

Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney runs through Sept. 5 at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach. Tickets: $12 adults; $5 ages 13-21; free 13 and under. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Also 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. second Thursday of each month. Closed Mondays and holidays. Call 832-5196 for more information or visit www.norton.org.

Retrospective exhibits excite because they allow enthusiasts to witness an artist’s evolution. Rememberingstanleyboxer: A Retrospective 1946-2000, currently on view at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, is no exception.

The 50 works, mostly paintings, but with a few sculptures speckling the landscape, tell the story of Stanley Boxer’s progressive love affair with abstraction. It’s a love affair that crescendos with brilliance and whimsy, thought the journey upwards is tempered and deliberate.

Wall text and catalog essays notwithstanding, this exhibit speaks for itself. Stand in the center of the gallery and read it as you would a novel. Beginning with his early works from the late 1940s and through to the late 1970s, Boxer’s styles reflect the trends of the day. Perhaps this is why he referred to himself not as a painter, but as a “practitioner.”

He latches on to the dominant style and perfects it through practice, creating paintings of skill and observation, though they leave one wondering about Boxer’s predilection to risk-taking. In his early career, he seems inclined to dip his toe rather than dive into the deep end.

Boxer’s art training began after he left the Navy at the end of World War II. He studied on the G.I. Bill at the Art Student’s League in New York, alongside Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Rauschenberg, who became a lifelong friend. Though he worked in other media, including sculpture and printmaking, painting proved to be his foremost passion. By 1953, Boxer had his first one-man exhibit and was represented by the prestigious Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

Early on, Boxer (1926-2000) moves quickly from the figurative to the abstract, as in Bathers (1947), where the colors and shapes allude to the human form and to the sea, with references to Cézanne and Picasso. In his two Figures in an Interior (1957 and 1958), Boxer further pushes away from order and composition by incorporating bold, expressionistic brushwork. While not entirely original in gestural style, it is original in its bold use of discordant blocks of color that seem more like cutouts than painted images.

By 1966, and seemingly to coincide with the advent of minimalism, he pulls back from the use of emotional brushwork and strong color in favor of a more subdued palette. The result is a focus on surface that is evident by transparency of the linen on which he paints as well as areas where the surface moves to the forefront because it is intentionally left blank.

This surface and flatness is evident in Two Bathers (1966) and here the cutout images alluded to earlier are real. Elements of minimalism and color field present themselves (though Boxer rejected being referred to as a color field painter by Clement Greenberg).

In the 1972 painting Willowsnowpond, Boxer’s minimalistic approach is most pronounced. It almost seems that he is stifling the passion that once drove his brush in order to succumb to the fashion of the day. However, at this time, his titles become enigmatic collages of words.

“Boxer spoke several languages and he was a voracious reader,” said Wendy Blazier, the Boca museum’s chief curator. “His canvases often had mile-long titles, inventive formations of compound words which would indicate a mood or feeling for the work. Boxer liked to play with these run-on words, sometimes translating his titles into German, because he liked the way the German language linked words together.”

Towards the end of the 70s gesture and brushstroke re-emerge, though at first shyly, as evident in Gleedtwistofflayeddanknessassunder (1978). On the circumference of this work one can witness the moment when Boxer begins to approach painting from a different angle altogether. The paint rises from the surface and bleeds out onto the edges. It wants to break free from the canvas, yet it still restrains itself in a sort of half-in, half-out manner. At this point, it seems so like Boxer to test the waters before plunging in, which he would eventually do with great vigor, and which would become his signature.

“Boxer was often called a ‘sculptor of paint’ for his thickly brushed abstract paintings,” Blazier said. “In the later work from the late 1970s and on, he became known for troweling on pigment, using his fingers, brushes and a palette knife to create textures and patterns that sometimes intimated landscape, but more and more stepped out into the realm of pure abstraction — fields of texture, shapes and riotous color.”

This sculptural quality of Boxer’s work emerges with full intensity by 1980 in works such as Dourspreadofweavingnightglances, (1980). Here paint leaps from the surface and the absence of bold color makes the shape of each brushstroke, each dollop of oil paint, all the more intriguing in its formation. Art critic Grace Glueck once wrote that Boxer’s paintings “…seem to exist purely in the realm of paint: the artist sensuously exploring its physical possibilities without script or program.”

Like a skydiving senior, Boxer’s work surprises most towards the end of his career where it seems that having practiced to perfection, and built a sound reputation, he’s fully confident to take risks. As such, his later paintings morph into a whimsical hybrid of painting and sculpture. He incorporates various materials – wood chips, wood shavings, pebbles, glitter – to compose works of striking contrasts. They are dark, yet colorful. Simple, yet bold.

Boxer switches from painting on linen to building on canvas – a sturdier backdrop for what become complex assemblages. Though seemingly sparse from a distance, such as Roilypeersamongbloomednights (1991), these later works have layers of paint and materials. Here, rectangular squares of marble jut out from the bottom of the canvas alluding to Boxer’s sculptures, which are always composed of natural materials such as wood and marble. Yet it still retains its identity as a painted work, featuring a dark black background with yellow and sweeping strokes of white and green.

It’s in the works from the late ’80s and ’90s where elements of all Boxer’s previous styles join together and culminate. “I have deliberately made a practice of being ‘visionless’... that is, I go where my preceding art takes me,” Boxer once said.

This exhibit is an apt chronicle of his journey.

Jenifer A. Vogt is a marketing communications professional and resident of Boca Raton. She’s been enamored with American painting for the past 20 years. She received her B.A. in art history from Purchase College.

Rememberingstanleyboxer: A Retrospective 1946-2000 is on view at the Boca Raton Museum of Art until June 13. Hours for this exhibition are Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors, and $4 for students. For more information, call 561-392-2500 or visit www.bocamuseum.org.