Such is the disparity between supply and demand in the arts that most painters are forced to supplement their incomes with other types of work. The artist Chinyee refers wryly to this state of affairs in her show of recent paintings, "Between Interpretations," at Viridian Gallery, 24 West 57 Street, from October 4 through 22.

The title of the show has to do with Chinyee's "day job" as an interpreter at the United Nations and the fact that her paintings are created literally "between interpretations." It also reminds us that the process of painting, like diplomacy, involves finesse and problem solving for a successful resolution of each canvas.

Chinyee, who came to the United States in 1947, shortly after graduating from high school in her native China, is an abstract painter of surpassing lyricism. Her large canvases are alive with gesture, rhythm, and color, yet informed by an underlying sense of orderly structure that is especially clear in those compositions where brilliant flecks of pigment are held in check by the merest suggestion of an irregular grid.

In the present show, one of the most beautiful of these paintings is "Commitment," (see the color section of this issue of Artspeak), a majestic vertical canvas that combines stoic and painterly qualities in a particularly satisfying manner. Imagine a perfect marriage of Mark Rothko's grandeur and Joan Mitchell's exuberance for an inkling of this supper painting's unique appeal.

Chinyee's gestural lyricism, informed by her early training in Chinese brush handling, reaches new heights in other major canvases, such as "Bearing in Mind" and "In Brackets." The former, with its confetti-like strokes of crimson dancing on a luminous yellow ground, shows her perfect balance between freedom and control; the latter, with its luscious red and yellow drips, is one of her most juicy painterly accomplishments to date.

Also included in this show are a suite of gemlike drawings on rice paper board that reveal a more intimate side of this gifted painter. More than mere studies, these small color works are fully realized statements with all the qualities that distinguish Chinyee as one of our most accomplished exponents of lyrical. abstraction.