Wilshire Center

Susan Scott, an Expressionist painter from Montreal, logs another local show reflecting her fascination with literary narrative. This series was inspired by the relationship between the French Symbolist poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. Enormous lettering affixed to the gallery wall reproduces an actual feverish note from the 17-year-old Rimbaud to Verlaine. Not surprisingly, the paintings and gouache studies depict scenes of two men; they work in the kitchen, the young man sits brooding on the edge of the bed while the older man reposes, a young man hangs his head while the trench-coated object of his obsession hails a cab. Interestingly, one of the better works refers least directly to the Rimbaud/Verlaine tryst. In it a flaxen-haired girl has a restless sleep on a table while a vision of two embracing nude men floats above her. These paintings crackle with the heat of intense sensuality and a good deal of psychic anguish. (Krygier/Landau, 7416 Beverly Blvd. to Nov. 28.)