He builds his wax up with shrewd precision; a single gesture, allowed to dry and retraced several times, blossoms into a lolling petal shape. The base of a petal may be a different color than its tip. Countless petals in a single work make a playground for shadow and light.
Kline’s pieces flow in one of two ways: horizontal or spiral. Both are springboards for his experiments with color. I prefer his vortices, which have a hypnotic effect until you move a step or two, and they snap you awake.
The artist houses many of his paintings in a simple wooden frame; his colors splash onto it. That’s a little painterly derring-do, but it also suggests a pool with water sloshing over the edges.
Despite his sculptural technique, Kline’s most keen about what matters to a painter — color, light, gesture. The magnetic tones in “Seiche” sparkle across the gallery. It’s turquoise at the base, built up in pebbly horizontal strokes into ridges that stand out over the surface of the painting, tipped in powder blue.
If his spiral pieces are like eddies, his horizontal pieces are like ripples. In Kline’s work, those ripples are literal. He doesn’t have to paint light, because light bounces and glints off of his petals and ridges. He catalyzes water’s evanescence with dizzy color and hardened wax.