ART : Journey to Hope : An artist’s tour of Auschwitz prompted one series of paintings, and a stand of trees inspired the creation of another. Both can be seen at the Brand Library Art Galleries.

The journey a painter makes through the creation of a work often begins not in the studio, but some time before, in the course of daily life or through a specific event.

For Jean Towgood, the inspiration for her most recent series of paintings came from trees in a park near her Huntington Beach home that she had “walked by for 10 years before they jumped out at me,” she said.

In late 1989, a tour of Auschwitz, the World War II concentration camp, compelled Betty Schoenberg to create paintings that convey the terror of the Nazi period.

“I had to make something so that I’ll remember it” and so that other people will, too, she said.

Schoenberg’s harrowing odyssey through darkness to a point of hope, and Towgood’s Expressionist explorations of the world around her are on view at the Brand Library Art Galleries in two highly complementary solo shows.

Schoenberg began her series with “In Order to Rise,” which depicts the V-like symbol for peace or victory coming apart and dripping with blood. She distorts the shapes of yellow stars labeled “Jude” and “Juif”--which represent the cloth patches that Jewish people in Nazi Germany were forced to wear to identify them as Jews--in “Star of David.” The bright yellow color of these stars set against a black background make this painting especially disturbing.

” Kristalnacht (Night of Broken Glass)” presents a tallit--a Jewish prayer shawl--covered with broken mirror pieces, painted swastika and disembodied hands crying out in despair. Railroad tracks symbolize the train that brought thousands to the camp in “ Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes You Free).” A prisoner hangs over flowers in “The Commandant Loved Flowers,” which Schoenberg painted on a door. However, she ends the series on a hopeful note with “Butterflies for Life” and “Seeds for Hope.”

Schoenberg, 75, said she has read extensively about history from the Nazi period since she joined the WACs, the Women’s Army Corps of the United States Army, in 1943.

Stationed at Fort Slocum, on an island near New Rochelle, N. Y., she ran the dental clinic there before she was transferred to Angel Island near San Francisco. After the war, she went to USC on the GI Bill to become a dental hygienist and took her first art classes with money from her veterans benefits.

Schoenberg returned to college in 1973 to study art and received a bachelor’s in art history and studio art at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

“At that time, we didn’t even have women artists in books,” she said.

In 1981, she received a grant to study and produce art for four months at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. “Being there increased my willingness to work hard to become an artist,” she said.

Towgood is herself a WAC, active in a recently formed group known as the Women’s Action Coalition, and is president of the national Women’s Caucus for Art.

Her large oil-on-canvas paintings, some as big as 7 by 12 feet, nearly vibrate on the walls of the expansive main gallery with their energy-filled colors, unusual textures and haunting compositions. Here, she has brought together a few paintings from each of several series she has been working on over the past two years.

All of the paintings in her 1990 “Fire Falls” series--which takes its name from the falls of fireballs that used to be staged regularly in Yosemite National Park--incorporate some parts of the human figure. The skeletal images among the flames could either be rising from or consumed by them.

“Sticks and Stones . . . Bones” (1992) also incorporates skeletons, although in this series they are under the scrutiny of a spotlight.

“I use skeletons to give that feeling of vulnerability,” Towgood said, adding that this series also represents her reaction to the riots in Los Angeles in April, which she prefers to call a “rebellion” or “insurrection.”

“Zone Series” (1992) has images of the trees in her local park and comments on the state of our environment. These oddly shaped trees appear like writhing figures stuck headfirst in a bog.

Towgood’s “Homage to Joan Brown” series commemorates an artist who has been particularly influential in her life. Brown was killed at age 52 when a column fell on her while she was installing an interior sculpture.

“Brown’s work reflected her life. That started me thinking that my art is part of me, connected with what I did in my life,” Towgood said. “Whatever we artists do revolves around what’s going on in our lives. The same shapes and images that were in my work two years ago are still popping up. The work is really a serial of my life.”

Where and When What: “Betty Schoenberg: Paintings” and Jean Towgood: Paintings” at Brand Library Art Galleries, 1601 W. Mountain St., Glendale. Hours: 1 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays, 1 to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Feb. 2. Call: (818) 548-2050.