Since I last wrote about his work back in 2006, California painter William Wray has moved even further toward abstraction. By “abstraction” I don’t mean non-representational art, but the original sense of the word, now somewhat lost, meaning to distill the essence of something.

He has also moved from a more muted palette to a vibrantly bright one, sometimes intensely so, placed on the canvas with energetic and highly textural brush marks.

Wray paints bold compositions that revel in the geometry of the industrial landscape and everyday mechanical objects. From those subjects he pulls an abstract of planes and divisions of space, and displays them in arrangements in which the negative space plays just as strong a role as the subjects themselves.

In addition to his website, Wray maintains a frequently updated blog on which you can sometimes find his work displayed larger than on the website (click on the images in the articles for the larger versions), allowing a better appreciation of the textural surface of his paintings.

On the website, note the fascinating page showing examples from some of his influences.

I was delighted to learn from the blog that Wray is now represented by a new gallery that is local to me, Parke Schaffer Fine Art in Wayne, PA, and I’m looking forward to the chance to see his work in person.

For those in the Los Angeles area, Wray’s paintings are featured in a show titled “City to a Fault” that opened today at José Fine art & Antiques and runs until November 29, 2011. The opening reception is November 12.

New York based painter Andrew Jones finds beauty in architectural details, particularly those involving patterns like the iron railings that line the stoops in many of the city’s neighborhoods.

He also finds fascinating patterns in the complex shadows cast by railings across the multiple planes of stairs in bright sunlight.

The sections of his online galleries also include broader streetscapes, landscapes, European scenes and floral studies.

Note that in many of the galleries, there are multiple pages, particularly in the Iron Railings section. There are also archives of paintings in all of the categories.

Be sure to choose “Full screen image” at the right of the images to view the larger versions; Jones’ work is more painterly and rich in texture than is evident in the smaller images.

Jones’ paintings on on display in a solo show at the Salmagundi Club in New York until October 29, 2011.