This year-old Hollywood gallery provides a sort of boudoir setting for a passionate love scene between septuagenarian Paul Lauritz and the Great American West. In spite of the lengthy engagement, Mr. Lauritz continues to express his adora­tion with a vocabulary of adroit brush work which just manages to avoid for­mula. These carefully executed water­colors of coastal, mountain and desert scenes come alive in spite of an overly economical palette and naked whites too boldly considered in conjunction with the softly applied washes of grey­-greens, -blues, and -browns. Other than an occasional deserted shack or aban­doned road, the artist avoids human in­trusion, preferring to set the stage ra­ther than populate it with characters. Though the subjects themselves are not monotonous, the pictures might better avoid the risk by altering sizes and pro­portions at times.

—Curt Oplinger