Wilshire

Apparently one of the first feminist artists in these parts, Nell Brooker Mayhew moved to Los Angeles in 1908, opened an art school and gallery, pioneered methods of color etching, lectured extensively and traveled alone by car to paint the West Coast’s missions, mountains and natural beauty.

What comes out of an exhibition of oils and etchings culled from her estate is not the discovery of some unsung genius, but it is Mayhew’s love of nature and her knack for seeing a vital pulse running through all its manifestations. She conveyed this by applying paint in nervous pockets and defining views of trees, the ocean and mountains in deep blue serpentine outlines. In “Sycamore in Mountain Field,” a temperamental sky of violet-gray ribbons swirls over strident blue peaks and a distant meadow where quick sketch trees look like little yellow toadstools. Mayhew is most memorable in paintings of flowers: “Zinnias” has an electricity we don’t easily forget. (Turner/Dailey, 7220 Beverly Blvd., to Nov. 30.)