Distinct visions tie harmonious knot at Perry Nicole

Donna West opts for mood, space in the oil, ''Lowland Series #7.''

Most galleries of any size exhibit two artists simultaneously. The impulse, then, is to figure out what, if anything, links the artists, in theme, style or technique.

In the case of Donna West and Laurie Samuels, at Perry Nicole Gallery, "there's not a thematic connection," said gallery owner Nicole Haney. ''The fact that they look good together is purely happenstance. Both artists are intuitive with color, though Laurie is more dramatic and bright, and Donna is more subdued."

Laurie Samuels' ''Fruits of My Labor'' carries on whimsically in acrylic.

Donna West opts for mood, space in the oil, ''Lowland Series #7.''

Color is no small matter for painters, and to follow threads of hue between two artists in a gallery can provide lively exploration of their work. Ultimately, however, the separate visions of Donna West and Laurie Samuels do not elide; we have to look individually to comprehend their work more thoroughly.

West, 56, lives in Baton Rouge. Her constant artistic preoccupation is landscape presented in spare, almost abstract terms, with low horizon lines, luminous towering skies and pearly colors. There's a slight blur, as if you were looking at the scene from a speeding car or train.

West's father served in the Coast Guard, "so naturally," she said in a telephone interview from New York this week (resting before going to a Sting concert), "we lived in coastal areas, Hawaii, California, with that flatness and openness. I'm sure that was an influence. And the coastal region in Louisiana is like that too, with that sense of spaciousness."

The dim but glowing colors in her paintings and the hazy effect produce a sense of thoughtfulness, even nostalgia, in the viewer.

"The paintings are more about mood than object," she said, "more about the shape and light than the details. For example, I don't do a real detailed sky. It's more about layers of paint."

The intensity of her paintings of whatever size — they go from 12-by-16 inches to 48-by-48 inches — and the sense of interior natural power also induce a feeling that goes beyond retrospective to spiritual, a factor that links West's work with such 19th century American artists as George Inness and the painters of the Hudson River School.

"That's absolutely true," said West. "I was doing more realistic painting, but then I started looking at Inness' work. I was traveling to different museums to see his paintings. That's when I got more interested in the qualities of light and that's when my work started getting more abstract."

There's nothing abstract about Samuels' whimsical paintings of birds and circuses and eggs, though there's certainly a foundation in nature.

"I was raised in the South," said the artist, 51, who is part of the local Samuels furniture family, "and I paint what I see and what I know and remember, memories from childhood and places I go back to."

With a degree in design from the University of Mississippi and being an interior designer by trade, Samuels sees a definite link between her training and her heavily textured artwork.

"My sense of texture and color is deeply influenced by my background," she said. "My work has a lot of stamping and stenciling and scrapping and sanding. I love to get a sense of depth and surface in the paintings. I think my feeling for and work with fabric is part of that."

As far as her sense of inventiveness and whimsy is concerned, "the climate is not so uplifting now," said Samuels, "and we don't know when that is going to change. People could use some uplift."

Donna West: 'Recent Landscapes'

Laurie Samuels: 'Wing and a Prayer'

Through Dec. 31 at Perry Nicole Fine Art, 3086 Poplar in Chickasaw Oaks Plaza. Call 458-0141.

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