The Gowanus seems to endlessly inspire. Real estate speculators. City historians. Mafia hit-men. Artists.

Ah yes. The light of the Gowanus has been compared to Venice. Even Hepcat, who takes many a picture there, says so.

What is it? The romance of the industrial landscape? The Kentile sign? The view of Manhattan and the elevated subway train?

And now, a well-known Brooklyn artist is showing her pictures of the Gowanus on the Upper East Side. Here’s the blurb from the tony gallery where she is showing her work.

On Thursday, February 14, Hirschl & Adler Modern will open Diana Horowitz: Recent Paintings. The artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery will feature close to twenty new paintings in oil, ranging in size from 8 x 10 inches to 22 x 34 inches. This exhibition is an exciting departure from her last show, as Horowitz presents, for the first time, a series of purely abstract paintings. These abstractions will be shown alongside the open-air landscapes depicting the familiar urban panoramas of Brooklyn and Manhattan, for which the artist is well-known.

Painting intimate landscapes from direct observation, Ms. Horowitz returns repeatedly to a chosen site to complete each work, usually limiting the size of her canvas or masonite panel for easy carrying. However, the resulting works are much more than “oil sketches”, for these small, rigorous, quasi-panoramic views convey a surprising amount of information about her subjects.

Out to the Bay explores a historic section of the Gowanus Canal, with its loading platforms, storage containers, and machinery, while Green Tanks features a rhythmic row of mint-green silos, quietly heroic and bathed in sunlight, as reflections dance in the water below. In From 7 World Trade, Horowitz presents the geometric intricacy of the roofs, streets, reflections, and gleaming facades of urban citysprawl as orderly, natural, and calm. Whether a serene view of a commercial waterway or a bird’s-eye view of city rooftops, Horowitz floods her intensely observed studies with light and atmosphere, making palpable the summer haze and city smog.

Horowitz’s new abstractions share many of the same basic elements as her structured landscapes. Each chockablock construction is a celebration of paint–a geometric patchwork of planes of color–inspired by the built environment captured in her landscapes. In them, the artist continues to explore how atmosphere influences the properties of color and light and produces a particular tonal range and mood. Horowitz creates tension through balance and counterbalance, manipulating the space until the painting, as she states, “resolves into something that seems both surprising and inevitable.