While many contemporary artists consider the urban landscape, few are doing so with the craftsmanship and nuanced emotion of Matthew Daub. Joyce Carol Oates, in an introduction to the catalog of his current exhibition at ACA Galleries, writes, “His work is subtle, understated, ‘poetic’ – he’s a visionary of the near-at-hand and seemingly domestic – the world for smalltown America, rural landscapes and forlorn industrial buildings upon which light and the absence of light confer an austere dignity. … Like his distinguished American predecessors Winslow Homer, George Bellows, John Marin, Edward Hopper, and – (if we subtract the shimmering mysticism) – Charles Burchfield, each of whom painted American scenes in profoundly different ways, Matthew Daub makes of the regional something universal and archetypal; his flawlessly executed watercolors and paintings are not representations of scenes we have all seen, but transformations of the familiar into something rich and strange.”

Matthew Daub: Kempton: Works on Paper 2009 – 2011 runs through April 23 at ACA Galleries, 529 West 20th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, Fifth Floor, 212-206-8080, acagalleries.com.

Franklin Einspruch is an artist and writer.