Santa Monica

Cascades of dense dark paint shrouded in thin, slippery whitewash make Joe Goode’s newest paintings into waterfalls. Like earlier “Tree” and “Forest Fire” series, the artist again gives us abstraction carefully wrapped in the guise of the natural environment, or vice versa. The surface of these long, slender, dark paintings are rich with textural marks. The color frequently suggests slate or serpentine stone but is applied loosely so that underlying layers of contrasting color can peek through mixed on the surface. A spray of white paint dashes from the top and down the center of this painterly agitation. Like water spilling over rocks in a waterfall, the white spreads out and mists portions of the canvas in a transparent veil of brightness.

As much as Goode’s paintings suggest waterfalls, they resolutely defy being representational painting. They pursue the exploration of abstraction as a concept. But in series after series he keeps such forays into deep painterly thought thoroughly accessible. (James Corcoran Gallery, 1327 5th St., to Feb. 10.)