Review of Catherine Kehoe's show The Difference Between Things in the Boston Globe by Cate McQuaid

LURING THE EYE TO SOMETHING BEYOND PLANES, EDGES

Catherine Kehoe paints her self-portraits quickly and her still lifes painstakingly. Both, on view at Howard Yezerski Gallery, appear constructed from planes of color and sharp edges. Look at the small "Self Portrait in Orange," just over 3 inches by 5 inches. In hues of earth and dying embers, we see the strong horizontal of her red glasses over the peachy square of her right cheek, and the broad planes of her nose outlined in brown. The image looks as if she constructed it from flashes of light and pockets of shadow.

"Alabaster Compote" highlights the stemmed dish's translucence in warm yellows, and that of the pale grapes it holds. In contrast, it stands on a turquoise cloth that has all the edges and flat passages we're used to seeing in a Kehoe painting. Such marks are her building blocks.

Her aim is to anchor a moment, to capture the illusory with pigment, brush, and palette knife. She conjures "Doctor K's new hat"from flashes and shards - the pale blue reflections in her glasses, the gleam of her pearl earrings, the blue shadow of her upturned collar against a shoulder soaked in yellow. Even the chocolate of her porkpie hat shimmers. Her face - dark-eyed, stern, lit by a wash of light from the left - is to this artist merely a form in the mirror, an easy subject, devoid of ego. It's not about her, or about us. It's about the paint, and the way light and form come together in this very second, if only she can portray it. And she can.