Steven Charles: Clearing in the Forest

In Steven Charles’s exhibition “Clearing in the Forest,” the artist is presenting a new body of paintings created with the self-imposed restraints of using no color and working without his typical arsenal of tools. Named for a painting by one of the artist’s inspirations, Paul Klee, the show (on view at Cris Worley Fine Arts through August 14) demonstrates the artist’s efforts to develop new methods outside of his own preconceived artistic ideas, which has yielded a series of black-and-white works of varying shapes and sizes with overlapping compositions employing different textures, techniques, and markings.