SIGHTS : ‘Impressions of World Travel,’ and Eroticism in Ojai : Ruth Newman’s images are at County Museum of History and Art. ‘Sex sells’ at Artist’s Gallery.

Ruth Newman has spent the better part of the last several decades in Ventura County, mostly on her family ranch in Ojai, and now at home in Westlake. From here, the artist has deplaned to far shores and is wont to paint scenes from around the world.

Thus, what we see in “Impressions of World Travel,” her current exhibit at the Ventura Museum of History and Art, is a show that eyeballs terrain familiar and exotic. Today, Ventura County. Tomorrow, the world. And vice versa.

A loose, sensuous depiction of a nymph figure at Angkor Wat contrasts with a similarly decorative depiction of “Our Atrium”--at home in Westlake. In a far corner of the gallery, framed by images from Haiti and Dakar, is “End of an Era,” depicting the shadow-speckled, soon-to-be demolished wall of the Bank of A. Levy building in Oxnard.

From the evidence here, Newman has toured the world, and also toured the world of painterly possibilities. In this sampling, her paintings seem to follow one of a few different approaches.

Many of them are composite images built up from diaphanous layers, like multiple screens meant to represent culled experience. By contrast, other pieces involve blocks of flat color, assembled, collage-fashion, into one-dimensional scenes. A series of paintings done in Mexico depart from either of these techniques, going for more of a dappled, tactile mode of paint application.

Although focusing largely on the artist’s global travels, the work seems less concerned with indigenous cultures or specific sociology than the sheer visual charms encountered in exotic places.

“Order of Nuns in Rome” is less about the life of Italian nuns than it is the optical cadence of their habits on a staircase. Faces are shown sans features, with greater detail lavished on koi fish and floral subjects than the particular characteristics of people from separate cultures.

One of the most memorable images has very little to do with its exotic locale, and everything to do with the power of a distinctive painting. “Bora Bora” could be San Diego, for all that geography matters, in this surrealistic, Magritte-like view out of a portal to the ocean.

As a whole, the show has no particular cohesive statement to make: these are travels in search of an aesthetic. But there are pleasant surprises along the long and winding road.

TRIAL BY JUROR

Over at the Buenaventura Gallery hang the fruits of the eighth annual juried art competition, judged by Priscilla Bender-Shore. It’s a sprawling sampler of local work, featuring many familiar names and a lot of competently rendered but fundamentally conservative art.

The critic’s choice for best-of-show award must go to Mary Christie’s “Juror’s Choice and the In Crowd,” a regionally relevant satirical view of the reception for another local juried exhibition--last February’s Assembly of the Arts show at the Ventura Museum of History and Art.

That show inspired a minor buzz of controversy because of the first prize awarded to Oxnard resident Kyle Linds for his huge, wonderfully wacky painting, “Auto.” Christie depicts the gallery scene with that painting, a mad bearded juror, and a gathering of attendees with sheep’s heads milling in the space, presumably expressing their dismay.

Nothing as offbeat or striking as “Auto” is hanging at the Buenaventura Gallery, but there are a number of notable pieces on display.

Carole Milton’s “The Faces of Eve” is a mythical image soup, with thick swipes of paint on a seething red backdrop. Phyllis Bengston’s “Oregon Scape” peers down, bird-like, on nocturnal suburbia, while Sharyn Robinson’s “The Last Time I Saw Paris” is an example of Robinson’s characteristic, mysterious image bank, an ambiguous view through a microscope. Scott Gordon’s small paintings exude a rugged, quasi-representational panache.

Of the three-dimensional works, Hannah Lore Hombordy’s festive cartoony Cubism contrasts sharply with the quivering sexual politics of Robyn Posin’s “She Who Howls with Women’s Pain,” a mask-like form woven from human hair.

THE SECRET SEX LIFE OF OJAI

Mary Christie is also showing an impressive painting, “Bedside Manners,” of a nude woman perched at bedside, as part of the “Bashful Bill’s Erotic Art Show” at Artist’s Gallery and Frame Shop in Ojai.

As gallery manager and curator Gayel Childress said, laughing, “sex sells. We’ve sold several pieces out of here, so the look of the show keeps changing. We had so many people at the reception that you couldn’t see the art.”

There is art here worth seeing. Take, for instance, Jan Sanchez’s works--her stylized nude paintings and her neon, wood and steel sculpture, “Dancer in Red,” with an abstracted figure on a chessboard grid, serves as a centerpiece in the gallery.

Paul Lindhard’s avocado wood sculpture “Self-Love” could be an ambiguous, ambisexual torso of avocado wood. Christine Brennan’s familiar gnome-like creatures calmly fondle each other’s genitalia.

Also on view are Beatrice Wood’s coy, post-coital drawings. One, done in this, her 100th year on the planet, matches the sight of nude lovers with the telling title: “Are the Scrambled Eggs Ready?”

Gretchen Greenberg’s “Headland Deities” suggest phallic sea plants in the tidal current. Here, the erotic undertow is all the stronger for its not being spelled- and fleshed-out.

Eroticism is alive and well in Ojai.

Josef Woodard is an avowed cultural omnivore who covers art and music.

Details

* “Ruth Newman: Impressions of World Travel,” through Jan. 9 at the Ventura Museum of History and Art, 100 E. Main St. in Ventura; 653-0323.

* Buenaventura Art Association Eighth Juried Competition, through Dec. 4 at the Buenaventura Gallery, 700 Santa Clara St. in Ventura; 648-1235.

* Bashful Bill’s Erotic Art Show, through Tuesday at Artist’s Gallery and Frame Shop, 319 E. El Roblar Drive in Ojai; 640-1387.