HOLLYWOOD

Patricia Patterson has made a career of recording her findings about a village in the Aran Islands where he spends her summers. A show of recent paintings may not bring the project to a close, but it certainly introduces an unaccustomed emphasis on aging and death.

In league with such American artists as Edward Hopper, Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz, who paint domesticated figures with restrained (or repressed) emotion, Patterson chooses subjects that seem to have much in common with the stoic, inarticulate archetypes that we associate with hard-pressed Midwestern farmers. The colors of the fields and kitchens in her broadly painted canvases are cheerful and her subjects have each other, but they are growing old and scruffy. Even if they occupy the same room, they tend to stare off in opposite directions.

Two 1982 paintings of a joyous couple (the only remnants of a fire that destroyed much of Patterson’s oeuvre) strike a dramatic contrast with recent pictures of brave survivors. You can almost hear the couple’s laughter ricocheting through the oppressive silence. The silent ones do, however, write letters--some of which Patterson reproduces in paintings, thus lending clues to the narrative cycle. Painted text that’s juxtaposed with images reveals a drowning tragedy and the sad tale of a dog that died untended by his bereaved owners.

Relief is spelled r-e-l-i-g-i-o-n. Oddly enough, it’s imported from France in the form of St. Sara and two other holy beings who travel in a boat. Apparently this has something to do with an infusion of French Catholicism into Ireland, but you won’t learn that from the artwork. What you will learn, once again, is that Patterson is fascinated with how people muster inner strength in difficult circumstances. (Newspace, 5241 Melrose Ave., to May 2.)