At seventy-five years of age, painter Robert Jones continues to breathe life into a brand of Expressionism seldom executed these days with any degree of resolve or conviction. Jones, a student of Hans Hoffman, delivers his brush strokes with a confidence and vigor that can make the work of much younger, conceptually-based artists appear impotent and over-wrought.

With their dancing, sooty-black lines and vibrant pinks, greens, blues and yellows, Jones’ abstract paintings hover on the threshold of the figure. Our visual hunches are confirmed by his straight-forward titles, but not always in ways we expect. In Harbor, for example, black streaks reveal themselves as an arrangement of sloops, boats, and piers. But the painting’s bright-orange surface becomes both foreground and background, depicting sunlight reflected off the water and into our squinting eyes.

Distilled through this conflation of space, there is a sense of desire that stirs within his altered human landscapes. As with much of Jones’ work, this series of small and large oils explores familiar male obsessions. Unlike Picasso or DeKooning, however, he renders his impulses with delight and -- remarkably -- something approaching innocence.

Garden Girls III is as randy as it is discreet. Pink squares of color are dispersed upon a scattered green surface, loosely bound by curvaceous black lines. Once we discern the movement of its fluid female forms, we experience the disruptive moment when a man recognizes his own physical urges.

The other paintings follow in this vein. In Picnic, we observe the outlines of nude figures superimposed upon a red, patterned tablecloth, suggesting the possibilities of an intimate encounter. The vertical black stripes of Bathers become the legs of two persons wading into the tide. We are left contemplating what might take place beyond our limited lines of site. Even in the smaller Secret Garden the black, rounded form has the alluring quality of a human figure waiting in the shaded greenness.

Robert Jones’ greatness as a painter lies in his ability to capture the unique sensation of sexual arousal and the lingering promise of its fulfillment.