Mary Weatherford @ Sister & Cottage Home

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Four new paintings by Mary Weatherford at Sister show nearly identical tangles of grape, wisteria or another vine, close up and after most of the leaves have fallen. Rendered in muted grays, green, ocher and off-white hues, the autumnal beauty of the image melds with a fecund profusion of linear marks to carve out remarkably deep layers of space.

Weatherford paints on linen using Flashe vinyl-based colors, whose opacity seems to absorb light the way velvet does. The vines’ inescapable references to Jackson Pollock’s abstract skeins of poured color are risky and audacious, which makes the payoff in these small and lovely paintings all that much greater.

A few blocks away at Cottage Home, seven large paintings from the last decade focus on two themes: brick walls, which repeat horizontal rows of multicolored rectangles at once vaporous and impenetrable, and actual starfish glued to the surface of canvases brushed with color. (One starry field is storm-tossed like a seascape from J.M.W. Turner, while another is like wallpaper for a child’s room.) They also allude to formidable artists such as Jasper Johns and Vincent van Gogh, yet always in a manner that is singularly inventive.

Weatherford works in series that, judging from the dates, she apparently sets aside and returns to later — sometimes many years later. It’s easy to see why. The modest repertoire is surprisingly compelling, like a quirky set of self-imposed limitations that demands continual reinvention.

Look for reviews in Friday’s paper of Gary Simmons at Margo Leavin, Morgan Fisher at China Art Objects and Darren Hostetter at Sam Lee.

--Christopher Knight