...His subject matter is so unassuming as to be almost inadmissible. But it is ordinary in extraordinary ways.... Enough has been said about York’s reclusiveness. What matters is the quality of his execution. Art lives less on inspiration than on the calculated control of it. Art resides in know-how. Even York’s most playful arrangements—a gentle memento mori, riffs on Manet or an ethnographic photo—carry the conviction of a commanding hand. Everything he touched rewards the solitary act of looking. Entries for Albert York are still sparse in the annals of modern art, though that is changing. Every serious painter in New York knows his work. So do serious collectors. And for good reason. Fairfield Porter, writing in 1974, claimed that it was York’s empathy that attracts. That, and reticence. Legions of artists pound us with the gravity of their ideas. Albert York preferred two trees against the sky. (http://www.maureenmullarkey.com/essays/york_feltus.html)