Joanna Frueh observed that Bramson's use of feminine paraphernalia interwove "passion, conflict, and eroticism," heatedly spinning her own self-emergence as well as the concurrent cultural emergence of women. Critics see in this early work a steady, if circuitous, search for her style through successive (and ultimately successful) experiments. Dennis Adrian later wrote that while this work never fully resolved the balance between its emblematic, fetishistic quality and three-dimensional "object-ness," it clarified Bramson's artistic persona and afforded her an "impressive freedom" she would use to powerful, unified effect in her mature work. Paintings and bas reliefs (1980– ) In 1980, Bramson returned to painting, inspired by an influential exhibition of Phillip Guston's figurative work. Critics identify several formal qualities that define Bramson's mature painting. One is her absorption of the painterly lessons of Abstract Expressionism, which dates to her earliest training. She combines those effects with a decorative impulse using lively patterning, which connects and unifies disparate compositional elements, and creates the "rhythmic dynamism," musicality, and frenetic energy in her paintings. Another unifying factor is her notably high-keyed color palette, described variously as: hot, steamy, lush and raucous, brash, and vibrantly acidic.Condon, Elizabeth. "Phyllis Bramson at Dart Gallery," New Art Examiner, May 1992, p. 30. Bramson holds her generally packed, topsy-turvy scenes together with what has been described as an "astute sense of composition." Finally, critics note her Surrealist sense of juxtaposition and spatial ambiguity, including a freewheeling approach to reality where abstract and figurative are often interchangeable, creating a context of danger, disorientation and flux. Bramson's early paintings often borrowed strategies from Japanese woodcut design, breaking compositions into rectilinear sections or diptychs, but in signature works like The Dance (1985) and Shipwrecked (1987), she began tackling larger-scale, panoramic compositions with deep landscape spaces. Within them, she would orchestrate a growing personal iconography, both familiar and bizarre: performer-exhibitionists, flamboyant costumes and accoutrements, theatrical objects (masks, globes, vases, swords, pillars) and exotic settings. Her dreamlike, emotionally charged vignettes implied archetypal, yet open-ended, relational scenarios, with contorted figures clinging to masts, bending over backwards, or paddling as waves swirled around sinking boats.Saliga, Pauline. "Chicago/Chicago," Exhibition catalogue, Cincinnati, OH: Contemporary Art Center, 1980, p. 6. While some critics wondered if the work contained too much, others praised it for just that quality, seeing in it "the richness and the adventure of living at the peak of desire." Bramson worked in a more postmodern fashion