Okamura’s scabrous landscapes go beyond the textural shenanigans of Mintz, Leong and Sonenberg; he uses accident and invention to inspire an encounter with nature. An undulating composition of trees and islets, Shadows and White Surf indicates, as the most recent painting of the artist, an inclination towards more clearly natural depictions. Because of this movement away from multiple ambiguities, a radiating hillside-shaped group of rainbow stripes has difficulties working inside the context of the present picture.

Carl Morris in Matrix on White imbeds a cocoon of color cradled by thick splashed black lines, within a stony grey ground. More visual exercise is provided by Madson’s Azul where, like a buried treasure reflected in a sunstruck mirror, irregular patches of vermilion, cobalt blues, yellow and black jostle for attention. Similarly energetic, a kind of neon Lindy is done by yellow, black and white in Guerreschi’s Citta Jaz. John Lentine’s impeccable delineations of building facades gain stature in contrast with Weygandt’s gingerbread-shaped houses, figures and boats; it’s a question of a more successful formula. Laliberte, a newcomer to the gallery, uses oil crayons to people, in all directions, across richly colored surfaces, boxed child figures, pink and alizarin angels completely fitted with wings and breasts, and blue imp faces. His willful primitivism has a certain brief ornamental audacity. The worst painting in the show, Martyl’s Asclepius Still Life aced-out Marcus’s Winter Bouquet for that honor through its incredibly lifeless color, shapes and paint handling.

—Rosalind G. Wholden