West Los Angeles

Two-Woman Dogma: Irene Lieberman arranges the ingredients of her mixed-media paintings into fussily pedantic groupings. Lorraine Veeck places found religious imagery hither and thither on vague terrains of abstract brushwork and collaged papers. After seeing 33 examples of the two women’s work, a viewer’s initial sinking feeling is confirmed in spades.

Lieberman canvases are affixed with such items as crumpled pieces of cloth, lengths of wood, twigs and chicken wire. The ponderously “arty” results look like art class exercises in basic composition, spiffed up in peach, white and turquoise to go with various decorating schemes. Titles like “The Blue of Peace” and “A State of Tension” suggest that more substance was intended. Indeed, Lieberman claims in a statement that her painting, which was formerly figurative, “remains essentially autobiographical.” Alas, she leaves no visible hints of this transformative process in her work.

Veeck’s paintings on paper are all titled “Patina between Arrival and Departure.” Juxtaposed with bleary, meandering snatches of painting are hieratic Byzantine images of saints, profiled “Egyptian”-style figures, small black silhouettes of men and beasts suggestive of ancient petroglyphs, collaged Greek and Latin texts and swaths of metallic paper. Veeck says in a statement that she works “loosely and intuitively.” That’s easy to believe; maybe it’s time to make some conscious, disciplined choices about the direction and meaning of these paintings, and to refine their painterly qualities. (Art Space, 10550 Santa Monica Blvd., to Feb. 17.)