This week in the Boston Globe, Ken Johnson reviewed John Walker’s new series “Seal Point,” remarking, “Whether painted outdoors or in the studio, his works exhibit an intuitive immediacy in the ways they are made and in what they’re made of.” From the three paintings showcased in the Globe, I would agree that these pieces appear quickly painted, if still somewhat more thought out. His paint appears to be mixed directly on the surface at times — the surface here is a Beano card — and this, combined with the impasto dabs marking the end of many of his brush strokes, all individually visible, might speak to a certain intuition that could come with a painter’s many years of experience.

If most of what Johnson writes about Walker’s paintings reads as an accurate critique, there is one statement that I find problematic.

When Johnson says that Walker has stayed true to “the ethos of Abstract Expressionism: a belief, that is, in the authenticity of spontaneous processes, feelings, and visions as against the artificial, spirit-crushing strictures of industrialized modernity,” it is not the assertion that Walker has stayed true to the ethos of Abstract Expression with which I have issue, instead it is the polarizing of Abstract Expressionism and industrialized modernity. If one is to think of the quick, energetic and intuitive brush stroke of the Abstract Expressionist as the antithesis of modernity and industrialization, I would ask, what is more spontaneous and what demands quicker attention than the industrialized landscape: its apex – the modern city, automobiles darting in every direction, saturation and over-saturation of media and advertising?

It is possible to draw a brushstroke out slowly and thoughtfully onto the canvas, and yet that same brushstroke can still appear to have been quickly, intuitively placed. Ultimately, as viewer, we see the appearance of process via the material, not the actual process. We should consider that painting in the Abstract Expressionist vein, the product of what is said to be spontaneous process and feelings represented in paint, resonates more deeply with the modern culture to which it belongs than it could ever clash with it. Do we have the same patience we once did to consume the slow methodical masterpieces of the academies? I think so, but that is no longer our culture, and faithful to our technological and social development over the past century, traditions of painting have developed and persisted whose seemingly accelerated execution reflects our own pace as a culture.