Double Take

Figurative art is a wide-open field, subject to as many effects and attitudes as there are artists addressing it. Sometimes, you can absorb the rich diversity and gain an understanding of an artist’s sensibility through comparing and contrasting. Such is the case in the current two-person show at Gallery One One One.

The human figure for both Mark Matthews and Myrna Dorn is a malleable subject, ready to be altered and fit into their respective aesthetic molds. But the artists have separate agendas. The figure’s humanity is in question with Matthews as he concocts alien-looking creatures in strange but seductive environments. Dorn is earthier. She creates vignettes in identifiable, real-world situations, but with rough edges.

Matthews’ striking photographic works were shown around the area a few years back. Straddling sculpture and photography, Matthews created scenes in clay and then fastidiously photographed his tableaux, gracing them with moody lighting and dark, sinister color schemes.

Echoes of that earlier are found in his paintings, which present mutant figures adrift in barely realistic landscapes. The work is surreal but with a fluidity in the painting and the conception that appeals to the eye even as it baffles the mind.

The best work here is “A Bed of Thorns,” with its bald Pierrot-like clown, a bright red heart in hand, woefully perched on a field full of thorns. The heart motif continues in “The Grounding,” with a purple face attached to a tail floating above a cliff, kept from drifting off by the pull of several hearts attached to ropes.

We’re in dreamy territory here for sure. The central figure is ear-shaped in “Hear I Am” and wears a look, similar to the other creatures, of forlorn resignation.

Look beyond the bizarre invention and a sense of romantic languor surfaces, in obvious ways: “Time Heals,” with a fractured heart on sleeve, projects a hopeful air of love on the mend. Dreamscapes and romantic melancholy converge.

Dorn, an artist based in Santa Cruz, veers in an entirely different direction with her work. Her paintings are peopled with clumsy or half-finished figures shoe-horned into dense compositions full of bright, brittle color. The sum effect is gutsy and personal with the simple clarity of folk art.

At times, it’s as if events are filtered through memory’s distorted lens: She depicts Yom Kippur as a frenetic buzz of activity and an art opening as a strange meeting of shadowy figures and nervous interactions. The nude woman taking cover in tree branches in “Undercover” hints at that archetypal dream in which we find ourselves nude in public.

A dislodged heart--Matthews’ recurring motif--is at the center of Dorn’s “Bleeding Heart,” an oddly compelling painting. A man embraces a woman (or is it a child?) and hands over a candy-apple heart to another distraught woman, and the red hue matches the uncharacteristically cheerful red splotches on her dress. The painting is awash in ambiguous melodrama--the best kind.

* “Full Sun/Full Moon,” art by Mark Matthews and Myra Dorn, through July 25 at Gallery One One One, 111 Dos Caminos Ave., Ventura. Gallery hours: 12-5:30 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; (805) 641-0111.

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The Big Picture: Kim Hejna’s exhibition of paintings at Border’s in Thousand Oaks is one of those shows that initially seem random but make sense on closer inspection. From her paintings, dealing with landscapes, seascapes and turbulent matters of the heart, a broader picture emerges.

A confident painter, Hejna explores the link between expressions of nature and emotional states.

Dark, thrashing gestures inform “Emotive Sea” and help define the emotional turbulence of “Betrayed.” Hejna also draws on the sense of mystery in sea caves and the exotic ruggedness of a “Na Pali Sunset,” a vertical painting with orange cloud formations looming over the water at dusk.

Somewhere between the shades of light and dark in Hejna’s show, there is a message about how humanity and the forces of nature share common ground.

* Kim Hejna, through July 20 at Border’s, Thousand Oaks. (805) 497-8154.

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Brushwork: “Ink Clinations,” at the Ojai Center for the Arts, revolves around artist Nancy Rupp, who shows considerable skill in the Asian art of brush painting. Rupp has studied in China and now teaches the medium, and several of her students are showing their work alongside her own.

Generally, Rupp’s work exhibits the confidence and spontaneous flair required of an art form based on the singular importance of the brush stroke.

* “Ink Clinations,” through July 30 at Ojai Center for the Arts, 113 S. Montgomery St. in Ojai. 646-0117