Artists turn the physical into the emotional in 'Natural Selection' 
By JUDY WAGONFELD 
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER 

"Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last." 

ART REVIEW 

NATURAL SELECTION 

WHERE: Davidson Galleries, 313 Occidental Ave. S.; 206-624-7684, www.davidsongalleries.com 
WHEN: Through July 2. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 

Consider this the motif of "Natural Selection," the motto of its five artists. Though written in the '60s by Paul Simon, it suits the contemplative, cropped landscapes now at Davidson Galleries. 

Devoid of humans and movement, the images seem to portray society on a break. In keeping with a go-slow mode, the artists stick to old-fashioned painting. They eschew the romanticized Manifest Destiny paintings that fostered restless expansion. Instead, they home in on narrow morsels that suggest staying put. Either emerging or new to the Northwest, these artists massage physical locales into emotional lairs, ensnaring us without remorse. One look and we're Lot's wife turned to salt -- feet firmly planted before their Gordian knots. 

But there's no need to untangle narratives -- they don't exist. Relax, the painters say, and look around. The visual is their art; a haven between representation and abstraction. Sink into the scenes and your mind melts like butter. 

Start with the chewy bread of Seattle artists Mary Iverson and Tram Bui and Los Angelino Timothy Tompkins. They are bullfighters stepping into the arena of color; magicians urging us to suspend belief as they perform tricks of perspective, structure and surface. 

The two Seattle artists do so by appropriating the language of architectural drawing. Iverson's "Red Poles" (60 by 80 inches) portrays shipping containers and the Port of Seattle's leggy "Seattle Red" (formulated as a port identifier) cranes, our cathedrals of commerce towering over Elliott Bay. Evolving from earlier realism, the imagery glides into futuristic, bisecting intricate lines and planes that fade into dramatic vanishing points. Underlying burnt umber and nougat-hued gestural brush strokes create the optical illusion of a particle board background, softening the container stacks' blocky edges. 

More haunting are Bui's spare, scaffolded buildings, spiritual relics grounded only by their skeletal roots. Viewed from a street-level perspective, they lean backward, pinnacles jutting into the sky. "Jackson," a monochromatic mint-green edifice and sky feels as tentative as a first date. Braving jolting, discordant hues, Bui abuts a garnet façade against lemony heavens. In the triptych "45th" a tangerine roofline punctures violet, acid-green and powder blue skies, colors as uncanny as those of James Turrell's Skyspaces. Matte and blemished surfaces hint at transition, at things unfinished, at the uncertainty of our time. 

At the opposite extreme, Tompkins adopts the zingy, hyper-real colors of Southern California. Swabs of high-gloss commercial enamel on aluminum waver as Photoshop ripples. "Samsung, Noon Effect," in lush pinks, blues, mauves and creams, replicates a sun-drenched L.A. landmark capped by a huge blue Samsung sign. Flower market scenes glow like well-buffed cars. As with Chuck Close's abstract dabs, proximity dissolves the potted plants into abstractions -- in this case resembling military camouflage, a creepy reminder of flowers on a grave. 

Dan Gualdoni (Allentown, Pa.) and Bill Hudders (New York and Pennsylvania) are Los Angeles' antithesis. Gualdoni lures us to Ireland's misty coast, beckoning through warm hues lurking beneath roughed-up waxy surfaces. Though small (14 by 11 inches), they hold their own, oozing the melancholy of Irish poetry and song. Hudders' blurry urban and rural landscapes simmer with an eerie sense of remove, fragments grasped from a dream. In "Manhattan Landscape," his somber buildings seem to play on Giorgio Morandi's subtle still lifes. 

This work is not about people in an environment, it is about the environment within us. The artists celebrate what's close at hand -- what nurtures, inspires, makes us feel secure. This month at Davidson, they make the moments last. 
 

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Judy Wagonfeld is a freelance Seattle art writer. She can be contacted at judywagonfeld@msn.com.