There’s something modest and unadorned about this new work by Nicholas Africano. The sculptures that were in the show are cast glass or bronze figurines small enough to set on a table. And although the paintings done in relief are large in some cases—as in three diptychs in which each panel is 90 inches high—the subjects and renderings are simple. These are studies of brown men who are either nude or wearing only baggy pants and, sometimes, a straw hat.

In the paintings they appear mostly against a brown ground the same hue that they are. Titles like Lost boy, laughing man, 1986, His Tears,

John Colt’s paintings evoke the evanescent splendor of sunlit tidepools, rippling ponds, august gardens—little worlds where desire awakens. His luminous stained canvases usually show a few denizens of such places (minnows, starfish, snail shells, and a grasshopper are among the menagerie found within the 11 works shown here, all 1986), but the lightly drawn images appear mostly to give a nominal sense of place to these gentle explorations of color.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, and a member of the art faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for 30 years, Colt has pursued a distinguished