SUNDAY, MAY 5, 2002

ART REVIEW/ Helen A. Harrison

Fron left to right: "Drifting Bodies" and "Hot Sky"

Emna Zghal
Dolan Center Gallery, Friends Academy, Piping Rock Road at Duck Pond Road, (516) 676 0393. Through May 10.

Ms. Zghal's mixed-media paintings combine woodcut printing with drawing and pastel for a layered effect that lets the carved patterns and natural wood grain show through the translucent surfaces. Intimations of swirling clouds, or perhaps eddying water, are obscured by veils of wispy color that soften their contours and enhance the suggestion of interactive natural phenomena. The unprinted paintings lack the subtleties that make the woodcut-pastel combinations like "Hot Sky" with its glowing striation playing off against misty blue whorls and "Drifting Bodies", in which two impressions of the knotted board confront each other- so appealing.