Rid yourself of absolutes. Purity is a tyranny of the abstract. Everything is in flux: in darkness there is always light but equally true is that pleasure is always accompanied by pain. No pure state exists. These are the hard-won lessons on full display in the paintings of Drie Chapek, showing now at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle.

As long as I’ve been on this planet art has suffered from a so-called “crisis of criticism.” What I have come to recognize is that this crisis is simply a problem of gatekeeping for the Western Artistic Canon.

Heimir Björgúlfsson makes art populated by birds and wild animals, snippets of the natural world, and bits of detritus evidencing the human hand.