Have You Heard of Emily Mason?

In her art, as in her life, clearheadedness was the rule. At “The Thunder Hurried Slow,” the second Mason exhibition at Miles McEnery since her death, the oil paintings astonish but never quite swoon with the effort; their breathing is more level. Most are medium-sized and seem not only painted but built, with lots of sturdy squarish shapes inlaid in the frame. Any seventh grader can tell you that a diagonal line conveys movement, but in “Pleasure Garden” (1970) the snug carpentry of two central slashes, one yellow and one red, keeps things static and holds the painting steady—if you shook it hard, nothing would fall out. (Even the blue splatter in the upper right seems fastened securely in place.) Depending on your predilections, the title might sound like a misnomer, but there’s a lot of pleasure to be had in crisply balanced moderation, just not the kind that tends to turn living artists into legends. Mason was named for a great American poet, and she named many of her paintings for this poet’s phrases, so here’s the inescapable analogy: if Pollock was the rollicking Walt Whitman of American abstract art, she was its Emily Dickinson.