Most of Jim Barsness’ mixed-media paintings (all works 1990) show real people striking attitudes that are both familiar and discrepant. We see the artist’s wife and children in the nude, full-length and hieratic rather than intimate. Taken from memory, the poses are idealized beyond anecdote, as if, in the course of their domesticity, these people had collectively assumed a double life that their individual features reflect. Their nudity is functional, a way of making what the artist calls “indelible character.” Looking at them, the discrepancies one recognizes relate to art history (scads of