This was Dryer’s last painting before her death at 34 of breast cancer. As Roberta Smith wrote in her New York Times obituary, “Moira Dryer’s distinctive painting method involved applying diaphanous washes of either casein or acrylic paint to big squares of wood, creating veiled, undulating patterns that could suggest an open landscape, the sea or a soft freehand tapestry. This process was inspired by the thin paint surfaces of the Italian Renaissance frescoes she saw on a trip to Florence in 1978. But her paintings rested firmly within the tradition of American postwar abstraction and related in particular to the work of Milton Avery, Morris Louis and the young Frank Stella.”
