The New York Sun - April 7, 2005

Gallery-Going

A few floors below in the same gallery building, the exuberant landscapes of Henry Finkelstein, a painter in his mid-40s, make an intriguing contrast with (Nell) Blaine's. Mr. Finkelstein's bold palette convincingly evokes the atmosphere of the French countryside he paints, his rich hues maintaining their full colorfulness even in the extreme lights and darks.

Despite his looser, larger strokes, his spaces are persuasively rendered; no less than Blaine, the artist knows how to hold down a distant point in space with a sudden note of blue or green. In "Pond, Gray Day," a cacophony of hues-greens, browns, blues-cluster in the foreground as reflections on the pond's surface: so nuanced is the artist's sense of light that these colors instantly hold as a single plane stretching luminously into the mid-distance.

Mr. Finkelstein tends to be less patient than Blaine, however, less inclined to linger and savor an object's location to see what it portends. But his extravagant brushwork delivers, energetically, the effect of the frittering of clouds in a wide sky, the craggy tower of a tree trunk, and the scruffy edges of the late afternoon shadows on grass. - John Goodrich