Looking at the paintings of Corey West, one thinks of Willem de Kooning's marvelous phrase “slippery glimpses.” Ostensibly abstract, West¹s compositions are simultaneously elusive and allusive. Working in acrylic and collage, combining a sinuous line with luminous color washes, West gives us sensual forms that could almost suggest unreadable details of some larger image. Her compositions tantalize us with the myriad meanings that they suggest; yet it is their refusal to resolve themselves into something recognizable in the eye and mind of the viewer that imbues them with a sense of mystery and magic. West¹s paintings haunt us like half-remembered memories, like lingering fragments of dreams lost to sudden wakefulness in her exhibition at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea , from August 12 through September 1. (Reception August 17, from 6 to 8 PM.)
  West was born in Senora, California , and earned her BFA from the California College of the Arts. This is relevant information because her work has qualities peculiar to the quintessentially Californian sensibility that we see in the work of older artists such as John Altoon and Frank Lobdell. West's vaguely biomorphic forms and subtle color combinations extend the approach of these highly influential West Coast masters of postwar abstraction into the postmodern age in a highly original manner.
The cursive forms in her compositions suggest all manner of natural subjects, ranging from plant life, to landscape, to the human figure. Yet titles such as “In the Dance,” “Cocktail Hour,” and “Two to Tango” add a sense of the urbane world to the mix as well, discouraging one from reading her imagery as exclusively pastoral. And the sheer formal sophistication of her compositions contributes further to the feeling of a wide-ranging allusiveness of an artist as conversant with Cole Porter as Green Peace.
In the above mentioned painting entitled “In the Dance,” for example, an organic central form appears suspended in space amid elegant drips on a subdued ground, pregnant and formally formidable, while “Bubble Gum” combines shapes as buoyant as any by Miro with pale pink and yellow hues in a composition at once fanciful and musical. The sense of a freewheeling imagination at play creates such contrasts and lends West's paintings much of their appeal.
 Although roughly geometric shapes, such as freely drawn rectangles, make their way into some compositions, the general thrust of her work is flowing rhythmical, with forms that move like waves and colors that capture one's attention without having to shout. Deep green and rich brown hues, harmonically juxtaposed, often dominate West's compositions, suggesting a sense of earthy essences. Yet the specific qualities of landscape are largely absent, and nature seems more a state of mind and attitude than a discernible presence in these paintings, with their sharply incised linear elements and elegant splashes and drips that activate surfaces and color areas with a sense of process that lends the work its enticing immediacy.
One gets the sense that Corey West is an artist for whom the possibilities of abstraction are virtually inexhaustible. She works as though no one has ever explored them before, and to a degree this is true; for surely no other artist could have come up with the particular permutations of form and color that make West's work so singularly successful.   

­­Maureen Flynn