Painter’s Amazon-Inspired Works Tap Into the Great Untamed

The Amazon looms large in the collective mind, serving alternately as a repository of ancient earthly life, as a symptom of man’s exploitation of resources, and as a rare example of nature in a relatively pure state.

Artists might naturally be tempted to tap into the subject as a point of creative departure, but they run the risk of cheapening or sugar-coating something unimaginably powerful.

The inspiration works in the case of Bob Nugent’s impressive paintings, now at Ventura College Gallery 2. The impetus for this group of paintings comes from Nugent’s visits to the Amazon River Basin, and he manages to convey a strong sense of wonder about the region while using it as a springboard for artistic self-examination.

Is the Amazon a wild, beautiful garden or, as bug-eyed director Werner Herzog insists in the documentary “Burden of Dreams,” a domain of “fornication and murder.” Or both? Nugent seems to opt for the latter.

Through these paintings, we get a sense of the artist’s deep admiration for the density and mysteries of the life in the rain forest. But Nugent also takes the inspiration further, into an exploration of his own creative space, with works veering in and out of abstraction. He creates paintings both complex and graceful, brutal yet vital, like the Amazon itself.

Aptly, he uses different materials and approaches, sometimes lathering up paint into palpable swirls or scratching designs into the surface. Sometimes, identifiable objects, like the subject of “Urchin,” are surrounded by unexplained visual activity, as if alluding to life on a cosmic or microcosmic level.

Ambiguities contribute to the allure. In the painting “Arbusto,” a large bulbous form floats in a pool of mottled pea soup green. That centerpiece could be viewed as either an allegorical depiction of a figure’s head, as a strange burst of natural activity, or an act of violence. Again, it reflects the enigmatic and volatile nature of life in this untamed corner of the world, as seen in the exhibition’s largest piece, “Tsitsica.” Protocol and rationality are suspended.

Still, drama exerts itself in visual terms, as in the oddly seductive painting, “Passaro.” A red-and-white blossom hovers in a corner, and a murky stew of greens, yellows and browns is interrupted by an unruly geyser of crudely painted black. Here, the elements cohere into a satisfying whole, held together by tensions and harmonies as is the show, in general.

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Distinctive Prints: Over in the New Media Gallery, three printmakers show works that push at the conventional parameters of the medium. The curatorial glue here has more to do with the presence of individuality: Each artist stakes out a distinctive stylistic claim.

Kathryn Hagy, whose work is laced with gentle humor and explorative attitude, makes poetic links between her not-quite representational imagery and titles like “Bloodstream,” with its semi-abstract depiction of a blood-cell dance.

The etching “Morbid Preoccupation” goes inside the body again, in a vague way, with its red-suffused space that seems to have a medical subplot. Though littered with images suggesting germs and surgery, its mysterious nature only renders it creepier.

Rounded, compound forms, like clouds or unexplained internal organs, hover in Hagy’s “Trampoline,” along with a few noses scattered like olfactory sentries.

The large pieces on the back wall are by Kimiko Hoshino, from Osaka, Japan, and now based in New York. Hoshino carefully blends different types of imagery and techniques. An appearance of creased red fabric commands the eye, while contrapuntal lines make ghostly appearances.

On the opposite end of issue of scale, William B. Thompson, a professor at Williamette University in Salem, Ore., shows small, deceptively simple black and white images. They combine crudely rendered domestic scenes of houses and gardens with layers of overlapping lines and shapes, working up a winning, faux-naif quality.

BE THERE

Bob Nugent and “Three Printmakers,” through Jan. 29 at Ventura College, 4667 Telegraph Road, Ventura. Call galleries for hours; 648-8974.