The Big Easel

Encouraged by the sale of a painting in a group show at New York's John Good Gallery, Jacqueline Humphries left some more work with the dealer—and to her surprise the pictures flew right out of the gallery's back room onto collectors' walls. Though the lanky halfCreole beauty from New Orleans "wasn't ready for things to happen so fast," Good signed her on for a debut solo show. This month, her second show there features her signature organic abstractions—which look like microbes shimmying through a vaporous grid. Her work may defy categorization, but Humphries is accustomed to being an outsider. Since she was eight and "the only kid wearing clogs," she has felt different. When she was a Whitney fellow, her conceptually minded peers "looked upon me as something out of the nineteenth century" because painting, not theory, interested her. But now painting's hot again and people are responding because her work is "optically stimulating"—and "my prices are still LOW!"

AMY FINE COLLINS