Quiet Statements : In ‘Six Decades,’ gallery displays serene paintings by Sally Miller that are imbued with a quality of timelessness.

There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about the art of Sally Miller, now showing at the Buenaventura Gallery, except for a quiet consistency and, more important, its lived-in quality. That these works, made over a period of six decades starting in the ‘40s, say something about the artist’s commitment to creating art is itself an admirable trait.

Culling from a life of art production, Miller exhibits still-life paintings, landscapes and picturesque scenes, such as the bucolic farm scene in “After the Rain.”

In “White Sand,” unfinished patches add to the character of the painting, while “Pierpont Bay” depicts the calm everyday drama of a multicolored, clouded sky hovering over the sea.

When figures do appear in her paintings, they seem like characters lifted out of short stories.

“The Gossip” spies on three men schmoozing on a curb. A rare touch of social realism emerges in “Potato Pickers,” with two rugged, salt-of-the-earthy men hunched over in toil.

Often as not, Miller’s art is quaint, serenely beautiful and out of harm’s way.

Those are timeless qualities, even if they fall outside the typical purview of the capital A Artworld.

* “Six Decades,” work by Sally Miller, through Saturday at the Buenaventura Gallery, 700 E. Santa Clara Ave. in Ventura. Gallery hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Tuesday-Saturday; 648-1235.

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THINKING SMALL DEPT.: The land is large and stuffed full of dreams, but the paintings are wee.

In fact, if you’re browsing the shelves of Sullivan and Goss too idly, you could easily miss the exhibition called “Fifty Small Paintings of California,” set up in the central corridor of the store-gallery-restaurant space.

But there it is: a large selection of paintings, mostly celebrating the lay of the California landscape but on a scale so small, the viewer is forced to pay close attention.

Scale, in art, works in surprising ways.

If large paintings, especially landscapes, promise (and threaten) to envelop the viewer, conspicuously small works seize the eye by virtue of their concentrated impact.

The irony here, though, is that the subject is often the great outdoors.

Dewitt Parshall’s sensitive landscape paintings detail the contours and textures of nature with a reverence implied by their simple titles--”Trees,” “Creekside.” Robin Gowen shows an appreciation for long, late-afternoon light raking across a scene, and Carl Sammons depicts the light palette and rolling lines of “Sandunes: Pacific Grove.”

Humans aren’t entirely out of the picture. Jon Wilsher’s oddly appealing painting “Nude Youth” finds a lanky male figure in a vague, rocky space.

He is peered at from a discreet vantage, as if spied with envy, or in some vaguely sexual aura reminiscent of Eric Fischl’s work.

Local color also comes into play in the show, as in Colin Campbell Cooper’s “Reflection Pool, Riviera,” referring to Santa Barbara’s Riviera area.

Mariusa basks in a mysterious air with “Santa Barbara Garden,” a soft-edged scene with sculpted shrubbery denoting affluence and the exclusivity of private spaces, in contrast to the wide-open natural vistas of the other paintings.

Although there may be a shortage of singular and striking works here, seeing natural grandeur in pocket-size formats conveys a certain subversive charm in itself.

It’s possible, given the variety of angles on California seen here, to view this definitively modest show as a casual-yet-intriguing commentary on a state with a large opinion of itself.

* “Fifty Small Paintings of California,” through January at Sullivan and Goss, 7 E. Anapamu St. in Santa Barbara; 730-1460.