painterly

From painter + -ly.

painterly (comparative more painterly, superlative most painterly)

1. Characteristic of a painter or paintings.
   • 1982 August 28, Andrea Loewenstein, “Becker's Experience Talks Back”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 7, page 11:

     She always shows and never tells. For some poets, such a concentration on the concrete may imply a loosening of language and of perception, or an immersion into raw emotion. Instead, Becker clothes the everyday in a spare, painterly clarity of perception.

2. (of a painting) Having clear brush-strokes.

• (antonym(s) of “having clear brush-strokes”): linear, plastic

• interplay, party line