LewAllen Galleries is pleased to announce Poetic color harmonies, a new solo exhibition by supreme colorist and accomplished mid-century abstract expression painter Norman Carton (1902-1980), on view from October 3 through November 1, 2025. Known for his rich color palettes and dynamic brush strokes, Carton’s work captures the emotional charge of his sublime gestures and artistic expression.

LewAllen is featuring 22 abstract works from Carton’s career, during which he became known for his particular prowess with the interplay between light and color, or as one French critic described it “his intense poetry in color harmonies.” Many of his paintings seem self-contained, as something whole and cohesive, like a dark universe undulating with a mysterious inner energy. One catches not so much a glimpse of this universe—an edge of it, like an inset rectangle on a larger view of outer space—but an entire universe itself, one in which the tension seems ever-ready to burst into a supernova (and sometimes does). He is especially celebrated for his intuitive inventiveness and powerful imagery within this historically important genre of American art. This aspect of his work is reflected in an Artist Statement from 1959 in which Carton summarized his intention as follows: “The free association that my painting might bring to the onlooker should encourage his independent thinking and stimulation ... an artistic experience which like my painting is unique and different ... .”

“My painting is the realization of organic unity between color and plastic form,” he wrote in a letter to the Dayton Art Institute, dated August 1, 1959. “It is a real organism; independent and free not only from obvious representational conventions, but is also apart from visual nature itself.” He has described painting as a “dialectical process.” But his intellectual investigations into composition, color theory, and medium are aimed, ultimately, at eliciting some unnamable truth— truth that must be experienced and realized perhaps in that moment before it’s spoken.

Viewing Carton’s work, there is a feeling of a sudden stopping of time, then a strong pull into their erratic interiors. That is the shock of the familiar but also the seduction of the strange. These canvases are mirrors, only the face staring back is no face at all, so there is nothing in them to love or fear save the unrecognized self. Carton’s paintings are the complete picture, self-contained yet so full of pictorial energy and exuberant color and thick impasto they might still burst into the great beyond.