Fresh From the Garden : From lush to lonely, canvases blossom with a variety of floral images in Century Gallery’s current exhibit. Featured are four area artists, with four very different approaches.

For hundreds of years, many a painter has turned to the garden as a source of inspiration. Remarkably, the subject matter of flowers in artwork has yet to be exhausted.

For various contemporary artists and art lovers, there is still something poignant and redeeming about lively images of luscious blossoms.

Century Gallery’s show, “From the Garden,” brings together the paintings of four Los Angeles-area artists who “cover four different aspects of getting their ideas from the garden,” gallery director Lee Musgrave said.

“I wanted to give a broad interpretation to the theme. I also enjoyed picking four different painting techniques.”

Alli Farkas’ stylized, otherworldly images of the lotus leaves of Echo Park Lake feature her exploration of chiaroscuro--the juxtaposition of light and dark, reflection and depth.

“I was drawn to the leaves, rather than the blooms, of the lotus plants,” Farkas writes in her artist’s statement.

“The leaves offer an infinite variety of shapes, from tightly rolled ‘cigars’ to gradual stages of openness, culminating in large bowls which gather in the sunlight, filter it, and cast it in new colors upon the leaves and water below.”

“Her perspective is extremely immersed in the subject,” Musgrave said. “It reminded me of when I was a little kid, down in the dirt. She has gone right down into it and separated it from the city. That’s what a park is supposed to do. You go to a park to escape the city and return to nature.”

However, Farkas writes that it was “not my purpose to portray realistic leaves and water. I wanted the viewer to feel the warmth of the sun on the leaves, get lost in the reflections, float on the water or be a bug on a leaf.”

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Shirley Kaufer, another artist in the exhibition, paints colorful, expressionistic flower still-lifes.

Her images, made of energetic brush strokes, are “more about the celebration of painting,” Musgrave said. “They’re very happy.”

In contrast, a sense of woe permeates Mark Jager’s more sharply depicted flower pots. The one in “The Red Vase” sits on a stool, full of color and flowers, but alone.

Almost all of Jager’s works on view present paintings within paintings.

A canvas that depicts a floral arrangement--a facsimile of one of his previous compositions--is seen propped up against a studio wall.

By reframing his earlier works, he offers a different perspective on his own vision and emphasizes the isolation in which an artist dwells.

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For Hilary Baker, the garden is a “starting point to go on to a very personal, introverted imagery,” Musgrave said of Baker’s sensual gouaches on paper, abstract visions of earthy delights.

Although some of her forms readily resemble a flower, as does one in “Happy Talk,” others convey more ghostly presences.

“She’s developed a visual vocabulary that’s personal and seems to touch something very universal,” Musgrave said. “Strange as it may seem, I think Hilary’s (paintings) are very romantic.”

Whether Baker intended to make romantic compositions is unclear. Her artist’s statement, consisting solely of the following declaration, suggests that other forces come into play as well while she is working:

“It is as much a source of mystery and bemusement when a flower crops up in one of my paintings, as it would be if I were to come upon a strawberry growing in the snow.”

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: “From the Garden.”

Location: Century Gallery, 13000 Sayre St., Sylmar.

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. Ends Jan. 20.

Call: (818) 362-3220.