Up Close and Personal : * The Century Gallery show ‘Intimate Images,’ representing 10 artists who work in a wide range of media, draws the viewer’s immediate feeling and involvement.

No doubt, pouring out heart and soul in broad strokes and sweeping gestures on a large canvas has its big rewards for artists. But working on a small scale has its thrills as well.

“Working small in the studio, you’re right there with your nose right on the subject. It’s immediate. Many artists like that kind of relationship. It stimulates all of your senses at one time, and it’s very involving,” says Lee Musgrave, Century Gallery director.

The resulting images are not merely small in size, but often especially intimate and involving for the viewer also who will get up close to them. One should do just that when viewing the small-scale work of 10 artists in the show, “Intimate Images,” at Century Gallery in Sylmar.

Julie Sim-Edwards, who curated this exhibit with Musgrave, had organized two shows by that same title at the LACA Gallery in Los Angeles in 1992 and 1993.

“In this particular show, the artists don’t have any political or social agenda,” Sim-Edwards said. “There is a stress these days to carry some double or didactic meaning. You don’t see that here. (The images) are intimate in size, but in feeling as well. They are personal sketches of personal thoughts. They are pleasant to look at, and not very demanding. The artists come from different backgrounds, but you would never guess who did what from just looking” at the work.

The clay sculptures of Yun-Dong Nam of New York--two of them called “Couple”; a “Hand” and a “Head (self-portrait)”--are “simple and straightforward, but abstract and contemporary,” Sim-Edwards said.

“As a ceramic artist, I am dealing with a history of connections to the Earth. . . . What I am seeking in my work is a reconnecting to the rhythms of nature,” he wrote in 1991.

Eunju Kang’s etching and monoprint “doodle plus three” presents references to nature and her personal relationships that take viewers “into her psyche, into part of a world. She invites you to sense and feel what is going on there,” Sim-Edwards said.

Kang was born in Korea, lived in Japan as a young girl, and moved to the United States as a teen-ager.

Yoella Razili grew up in Israel, attending university there before she moved to the United States. Her mixed media self-portraits convey divergent influences that affect a life by combining sharp edges and rough textures with delicate images of herself and gentle references to nature.

Brian Peeper’s untitled oil on canvas paintings consist of lavish mixtures of colors applied not with a brush but a pallet knife to form energetic textures.

“They’re very erotic in a way. He uses paint as if he were sculpting, as a three-dimensional object,” Sim-Edwards said.

Born in Holland, Peeper attended school in Beverly Hills and then lived in London and Switzerland before returning to this area a few years ago. “He’s not really a trained painter. I think he’s a natural painter, though.”

The presence of various palpable textures is also an important element of Craig Antrim’s “Cross” paintings.

The five on view here are from a series of 150. From “Cross I/Leaves/The Vine” to “Cross 12/8 = Infinity,” they seem to muse on various aspects of the universe, rather than the religious traditions associated with the cross.

Sim-Edwards herself has five watercolor collages in the show, including “Auntie Joon-Francis.” Her English husband’s aunt gave their young daughter a small silver spoon. Sim-Edwards has commemorated that gesture in this artwork, by including part of the note accompanying the gift.

“I always work small,” Sim-Edwards said. “Watercolor is my primary medium. I can control the medium a lot better when I work small, and words and typography won’t get lost. I view my painting as a process of learning. Sometimes I develop something. Sometimes it just happens.”

Other artists represented in the show are: Lisa Adams, Scott Gordon, Jeri Jackson and Joseph Piasentin.

Where and When What: “Intimate Images.”

Location: County of Los Angeles Century Gallery, 13000 Sayre St., Sylmar.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Ends March 4.

Call: (818) 362-3220.