LA CIENEGA AREA

Kathryn Jacobi makes paintings of unusual babies. Solemn, visibly concerned--downright worried, in fact--these babies appear to know that they reside in a realm where all is not as it should be. In “Erica’s Mother,” we see a child cowering against a wall, while “Baby With White Glove” depicts a toddler with a world-weary face evocative of the gin-soaked jesters that turn up in Franz Hals’ paintings.

Pinning the viewer with the mournful, vaguely terrified gaze of Walter Keene kids, Jacobi’s babes give off the ghoulish weirdness and indefinable “difference” of folks in cartoons by Charles Addams. A pair of studies of a young boy on a pony are a bit more benign, but from Junior on Flicka we segue to “Dwarf VII,” a heart-rending portrait of a sadly misshapen creature whose presence here says a lot about Jacobi’s perception of the human form in its cradle phase. (Ankrum Gallery, 657 N. La Cienega Blvd., to May 16.)