LA CIENEGA AREA

Stephen Greene is little known and seldom shown on the West Coast but he’s a figure of considerable reputation in the East where he has taught at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University for 30 years and built a resume to match.

In his local debut, the 67-year-old artist proves himself a deft master of lyrical abstraction. His soft-edged, pastel-colored canvases feel right--like comfortable clothes that were so well designed that they still look good when they grow old.

To the trend-conscious, Greene’s painting offers nothing new. He returns us to the era of Abstract Expressionism, though his current work has evolved from a figurative style. Such titles as “Expulsion,” “Inquisitions” and “Prometheus” suggest struggles both mythic and real, but the soft pillows of color and dry-brush strokes flow so gracefully that Greene leaves us with an impression of an artist whose agony is spent.

He seems to have arrived at a point so secure that he can spin metaphysical dreams into poetic abstractions that set one to musing about the breeze in a spring garden or the rush of water through a natural spring. Even the occasional image of a human leg or bones within an abstract field fails to set an ominous tone. This is authentically mellow art that probably got that way by being experienced and very well schooled. (Ruth Bachofner Gallery, 804 N. La Cienega Blvd., to Dec. 5.)