See Carroll Cloar
A southern artist in Manhattan.
Andrew Edlin Gallery, 212 Bowery; through February 15.
Before he died in 1993, Carroll Cloar fashioned a flat, colorful clarity in images of simple figures set in American situations — schools, the road, and landscapes. Everything is slightly out of scale, which lends his art magic. Part of a great flowering of so-called regional artists, Cloar showed his artwork in New York and created over 800 lucid pictures in his lifetime. Consider this show of his paintings and drawings from the 1960s and ’70s as an introduction. — Jerry Saltz