Neil Welliver made this painting, Flotsam-Allagash, which is now at the Alexandre Gallery, using paint to build up a scene of watery wilderness. He's not trying to trick you into thinking this is a photograph, he's showing you how he sees, and maybe feels, the world. Look at how he's handled that huge tree stump, the way the roots snake out like white veins against the sandy ground. The paint isn't trying to hide itself, it's right there, declaring itself in broad strokes of blue and gray. It reminds me a bit of Fairfield Porter, another painter who wasn’t afraid to show the world as a series of coloured shapes. I love the way Welliver embraces the flatness of the canvas, he is not interested in realism, but instead embraces art as an ongoing conversation, an exchange of ideas across time. In art, fixed meanings are boring, ambiguity is where it's at.