Melissa Meyer fills canvases with loosely brushed curvy shapes. She paints Abstract Ex pressionist amoebas. Meyer’s paintings recall the elegance of second-generation Abstract Expressionism—the work of the mid-1950s. This artist doesn’t invent anything new. And when I saw her paintings a couple of years ago at the Rosemary Erpf Gallery, I didn’t find Meyer’s color or brushwork especially lively. She didn’t seem to have the powerful artistic personality needed to give old conven tions new life. Yet people I trust saw more in those Meyer paintings than I saw—they felt that Meyer believed in those curvy forms. And now, after seeing Meyer’s new paintings at the Holly Solomon Gallery in March, I think there must have been an element of conviction in those earlier Meyers that I missed. In the new paintings Meyer has achieved some depth; she’s done what people saw her trying to do in that earlier work. The forms are the same ribbony plas-mic forms. But the color and the paint han dling have gained in fluidity. There’s some spaciousness in the paintings now. The inter mingling and overlapping of blues and greens and purples create a lustrous aquatic effect. Meyer is no longer merely evoking styles past. Now she’s feeling the pressure of the past at her back, pushing her forward; she’s showing how the past is relevant to the present. The impacted all-over space of Abstract Expressionism has become second nature to her. And she has given that space the slightly tacky opulence that