Patrick Heron

British artist Heron's paintings, drenched in light and color, confirm him as a colorist of genius and an original who resists categorization. Born in 1920 and residing mostly in Celtic Cornwall since 1956, Heron turned to abstraction in the mid-1950s, with a purely sensuous apprehension of color, space and shape that recalls his idols Matisse, Bonnard and Braque, yet he has restlessly experimented in his own idioms. His juicy biomorphic compositions of the past 16 years shimmer with atmospheric pyrotechnics yet are amazingly relaxed, even serene. In the 1970s he unreeled oceanic stretches of color, seeking what he called a ``full emptiness.'' His joyfully anarchic '60s canvases, featuring orbs, discs and squares that collide, nudge, hover, envelop or invade, invite the eye and the mind to play. In this stunningly illustrated monograph, art critic Gooding sensitively explores a dynamic body of work unfamiliar to most American art lovers. (Nov.)