Painter Anne Karsenty Laval’s Pastel Shades Illustrate Life’s Simple Summer Pleasures

As summer approaches, one looks forward to spending warm, sunny days outdoors, perhaps sharing a picnic and good conversation with a friend, or sitting alone under a tree, reading that novel that’s been collecting dust on the night table.

It is these and other such simple pleasures in life that have captured painter Anne Karsenty Laval’s imagination.

In her new acrylic and oil paintings on view at the Gordon Gallery, women gaze out at the ocean, watching sailboats go by; engage in intimate discussions by a brook; make vibrant floral arrangements, and tend to their children.

Composed primarily of pastel pinks, yellows, greens and blues, these paintings evoke her love for Southern California’s light and colors. She says she finds its space more physically and spiritually open than her native Europe.

“In Europe, you are always being judged based on the past and your family. Here, you are what you are. I am influenced by the people and the light here, and the peaceful, joyful pace of life where I live,” Laval said. “I’m not part of the hustle and bustle of the city.”

For the past four years, Laval has been living in Topanga Canyon. Born in Luxembourg, she grew up and was educated in Brussels, Belgium. She lived and worked in Paris for several years before moving to a house in Santa Monica Canyon, overlooking the ocean, about 10 years ago.

Yet her fondness for the light and lifestyle of the New World has not negated the importance of Old World charms and influences in her work.

“My Parisian Bathroom” depicts a quaint bathtub on legs, an old-fashioned sink among flowers and plants, all in the pastel colors of Laval’s outdoors scenes. “Daisies in Blue,” with its floral-patterned furniture, presents an image reminiscent of Matisse’s intimate interiors.

In “Atelier,” which is among her earlier works in the gallery, a woman wearing a hat sits reading in a small, cozy studio with a large window. The view outside is of a couple of sailboats moving over bright blue water.

“My background is still in my painting,” said Laval, who strives to create a sense of balance and harmony in each composition.

Gallery owner Barry Gordon added that her work embodies the perfect combination of Southern Californian and Mediterranean influences. “Laval likes to portray people in a relaxing state of thought,” he said. “She does things that are simple and delightful, light and lovely, in a non-cliche way.”

Laval began her association with the Gordon Gallery in 1986 after she went there to have portraits she had done of her two children framed. Gordon asked to see more of her work and hung a few paintings in the gallery. The response was quick and enthusiastic.

The present show of new work marks her fourth at the gallery. If there is a theme among the paintings, it is that daisies appear in almost all of them. “The beauty in a daisy is so simple,” Laval said. “It looks good, and there’s no sophistication.”

“There are flowers in almost everything she does,” Gordon said. “In fact, it’s hard to find a painting of hers without vegetation.”

Women with braided hair are also common to several of the paintings. When she was small, Laval had a good friend--she’s still her good friend--who had long hair. Her friend’s mother braided both her daughters’ hair, which Laval found “so pretty, simple and feminine,” she said. “It is probably the oldest hairdo of women and very close to nature.”

Laval said that she paints what makes her feel good, and that she finds joy in sharing happiness, good energy and hope in life.

“The reason why I paint--and I realize this more and more as I get older--is it is a way to see clearly who I am. It’s a reflection of what is more and more really me,” she said. “It helps me be honest with who I am. What is difficult in life now, I don’t want to share it.”

“New Works by Anne Karsenty Laval,” Gordon Gallery, 1311 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays through July 11. Call (310) 394-6545.

WORKS OF SCULPTURE: Artist Rico Lebrun (1900-64) spent most of his artistic life painting and drawing the human figure. He saw the human form, he said, “as a container for drama, for all the joy and for all the tragedy.” Keenly aware of people’s suffering throughout the ages, he was particularly interested in human beings transformed by adversity.

Toward the end of his life, the two-dimensional plane of paper and canvas proved limiting to his expression of the drama, so he turned to sculpture. “I ask sculpture to show me some new possibilities, a new part of myself which I had never paid much attention to,” he wrote shortly before he died.

The Koplin Gallery is exhibiting 16 of Lebrun’s affecting bronze sculptures from 1963 and 20 ink-wash drawings that span the years 1959 to 1963. The sculptures range from the 4 1/2-inch-high “Small Seated Figure” to the almost four-foot-high “Tiptoe Figure.”

Among the drawings, “Cain and Abel Becoming One” conveys the interdependence of evil and good. It is a study for Lebrun’s mural project, based on the biblical tale of Genesis, that he did for Pomona College in Claremont. Several of the drawings are from a series titled “Interior With Figures.”

Most of the sculptures and drawings here are of full-bodied, fleshy women. (In a lecture at the gallery two weeks ago, Susan Ehrlich, adjunct professor of art history at USC, remarked that Lebrun’s wife, Constance Crown, has said he loved hefty women because, after all, he was a Mediterranean man.)

Born in Naples, Italy, he immigrated to the United States in 1924. In 1938, he settled in Santa Barbara. From there, he commuted to Los Angeles to teach classes at the Chouinard Art Institute, and later to teach animators at the Disney Studios. He moved to Los Angeles in 1947, when he was invited to teach at the Jepson Art Institute, then recently opened near MacArthur Park.

“Nobody knows the figure or reveres the figure more than Rico Lebrun,” gallery director Marti Koplin said.

“Rico Lebrun: Drawings and Sculpture, 1959-1963,” at Koplin Gallery, 1438 9th St., Santa Monica. Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays through June 13. Call (310) 319-9956.

DIVERSITY IN ART: To illustrate the diversity of printmaking techniques that artists are using today, the Social and Public Art Resource Center is presenting prints by 14 artists in the exhibit “Printmakers 1992.”

Techniques range from the hand-painted lithographs of Gustavo Leclerc, the aquatints of Alessandra Moctezuma, and the monoprints of John Greco to the enhanced and reassembled photographic images of Delilah Montoya; the drypoint printed on silk that has been incorporated into the three-dimensional work of Lilya Vorobey, and the latex prints of Shirley Cannon.

The subject matter of the artists’ work is a varied look at social conditions of our time. Cannon’s prints form part of her installation, “Memory Quilt I,” one in a series of works dealing with memories of her childhood experiences growing up in mining areas of West Virginia. Alma Lopez’s silk screen, “Corazon, Ya No Llores,” (“Heart, Don’t Cry Anymore”) is similar to traditional Mexican retablo paintings in composition, size and format. It confronts clearly the issue of domestic violence against women.

Milly St. Charles’ collagraphs--made from a collage of textured materials that are glued to a base plate, inked and printed on an etching press--depict homeless people. Edward Gonzales created images that reflect social and political issues from a Chicano perspective in such prints as “Visions of Conquest” and “Having a Riot in L. A.”

Other artists represented in the show are Ron Adams, Cristina Cardenas, Maritza Danos, Andrew Polk and Jesus Angel Perez Valverde.

“Printmakers 1992” at SPARC, 685 Venice Blvd., Venice. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays, through June 30. Call (310) 822-9560.