Wildly beautiful, almost biblical, the abstract paintings of Chris Rivers have a feeling of paradises found and lost, of souls rising and fallen. Born in Manchester, England, in 1983, Rivers was a musician first—the drummer for the U.K. rock band Heaven’s Basement. Which perhaps explains that feeling of something sonic and rhythmic in his paintings, the high vaults and deep chasms. As Rivers said in a recent interview, “A traditionalist painter would probably call me contemporary, and a contemporary painter with probably call me traditional. There’s a big void in between which I live in.” —L.J.