The Valley

The watercolor-marker whimsy of John Randolph Carter probably most strongly recalls the comic book-style drawing of Philip Guston. The stream-of-consciousness drawing also evokes bored adolescents doodling away during high school math class. Carter’s images have that kind of free flowing fantasy--an exuberance unimpeded by narrative consistency. In drawings like “Orange Monster With Floating Faces and Small Animals,” they simply exult in extraordinary forms that mutate as they come flowing out of the pen to be set ablaze with bright color.

This kind of hedonistic outpouring from the unconscious flavors all the earliest work. It’s fun and joyous even though the lack of meaning eventually nags at the vacuous, colorful designs.

Later imagery in black and white communicates a troubled, ruminative edge. In one, four figures passively sit with bags over their heads like prisoners awaiting the gallows. The same figure and one doppelganger appears in a drawing that fairly breathes with frustration about going nowhere on a butcher block island between freeways and oceans.

From these few recent drawings it’s difficult to tell if the more complex, thought-provoking imagery is a new direction for Carter’s cartoons. If so, the emotional power is a welcome addition to work already at home in the surreal arena of the unconscious. (Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, to Aug. 25.)