Wilshire Center

Nancy Pierson shifts from people to huge dogs isolated on expansive backgrounds. She uses unpopular, hard-to-love colors such as muddy brown. Enormous oils of doggies. “Reggie” is a nearly 7-foot mutt with sad, vacuous eyes and an aging, lax body. There are smaller drawings.

Where we could easily weave complex yarns about Pierson’s people portraits, it’s tougher to see a dog in the role of a “spinster” or a “crook.” Pierson seems to have depersonalized the narrative in order to tap more generic pathos and psychic tension. Maybe she took on a less digestable subject so that the skill of her paint application would stand out. She reminds us that art is a tabula rasa to which viewers add their own story lines. Whether just deftly painted critters or mirrors of our own dramas, there’s a fresh, unspoiled eccentricity to Pierson’s hounds. (Ovsey Gallery, 126 La Brea Ave. to Oct. 7.)