DOWNTOWN

Janice DeLoof’s work is about her relationship with her family, the place she lived as a child, and her present home. But DeLoof plays the role of detatched outsider; there’s a palpable sense of isolation about her Popsicle portraits of suburbia. Working with embossed paper, wood and airbrushed acrylic, she punctuates empty arenas with tiny images of moms, dogs, and chairs. Shifts in scale lend pictures an arid clarity evocative of work by Joe Goode or Ed Ruscha. Like those artists, DeLoof is big on painting gorgeous skies. In a picture titled “Sunset,” we see two chairs set back to back on a distant horizon line under a Technicolor heaven. It feels like an image from a dream rendered in neon.

Also on view are Neo-Expressionist paintings by Jean Towgood. Hellish dreamscapes of errupting volcanoes and lurking phantom figures, Towgood’s turbulent abstractions take us on an unsettling excursion into the Jungian cesspool. Working on unstretched canvas, Towgood paints with a daubing touch that lends her work a lyrical, fluid quaility at odds with the emotions she explores. (Gallery 318, 318 Omar St., to Dec. 6.)