Jake Berthot, 75, A Romantic Sort Of Minimalist Painter

“In many ways, Mr. Berthot spent his career exploring how to supplement and expand on the modernist monochrome without straying too far from it.” After a 1996 move to rural upstate New York, “the natural world became an increasing influence. He turned to depicting trees and hills so close in tone to their backgrounds that they almost seemed carved from them.”