Wilshire Center

Seventy-odd years after the advent of Surrealism, its biomorphic forms have been so overused that spinoffs are rarely fresh or powerful. Linda Burnham’s excellent paintings of pods and sea life veiled in chalky fields are an exception.

Burnham’s organic forms don’t come from Surrealism but from detailed hyper-real lithographs of life forms by 19th-Century philosopher-biologist Ernst Haeckel and from ‘20s photo enlargements of plant life by the European professor Karl Blossfeldt. Burnham’s handsome paintings seem animated by their idea that the same structural impulse builds the compartments of a seed, the highly ordered bays of a Gothic nave and Moorish filigree.

Such a position could easily lead to ponderous corn but not for Burnham. The local artist is thoughtful, stabilizing her agitated surfaces and imagery with axial shafts of convincing, almost romantic light that work compositionally while heightening her regenerative themes. Also, she’s a keen draftsman who renders huge, sperm-like organisms, robust sea life and erupting botanicals with uncanny delicacy and precision. Finally she’s an instinctual colorist and paint pusher, able to achieve complex, mysterious surfaces from a small range of unusual colors like mustard greens and indigos. With paintings that are as visceral and visually seductive as they are conceptually tight, Burnham’s got something for just about everyone. (Jan Baum Gallery, 170 S. La Brea Ave., to Jan. 28.)