Art Review: Untitled images almost too calm

David Comstock's "Untitled: Red/Orange IV" is the most dynamic piece in the artist's exhibit.

David Comstock's "Untitled: Red/Orange IV" is the most dynamic piece in the artist's exhibit.

Perhaps working in black and white leaves an artist with a void that only color can fill. Local art patrons used to seeing David Comstock's black-and-white (or positive/negative) paintings may be surprised to see the range of colors he employs in new pieces on display through Feb. 28 at L Ross Gallery. In the finest tradition of American abstraction, these enamel and mixed-media works -- eight on canvas, two on paper -- not only eliminate visual reference, that is, they are completely abstract, but also are untitled, with only a mention of the predominant color. What you see, then, is what you get.

What you see first is a group of very attractive, even occasionally beautiful, paintings. Comstock's method seems to be to provide a ground of a single color, referred to in the "untitled," that initially looks simple but proves on closer inspection to be more complicated, since it is painted over scraps that give the ground a slightly roughened texture. Over this, he paints the piece's central "image" or cluster of activity in sweeps and blocks and controlled swirls of both contrasting and complementary hues.

The best example of this technique is "Untitled: Blue III," at 72 inches-by-54 inches the largest and most confident work in the exhibition. Over a ground of serene powder-blue, the artist creates a cloudlike pivotal "figure" with shapes defined by streams or blotches or floating fields of mustard-yellow, chartreuse, ivory and cream with a vivid, slightly truncated oval in a dried-blood red just off-center and two touches of eloquent black at each end; a faint white half-circle anchors the bottom of this nexus.

Without the injections of startling red and dense black, the piece would falter at the edge of being passive, but those elements give the painting the necessary burst of energy it requires to come alive, though still the overall effect of this piece, as with most of the exhibition, is of meditative tranquility. The exception to this placid atmosphere is another large piece, "Untitled: Red/Orange IV" -- 58.5 inches-by-62 inches -- whose brisk gestures and authoritative paint-handling give it a dynamic inflection missing in the rest of the work.

Along with "Untitled: Blue III," the two other pieces that use a similar light-blue ground, "Blue I" and "Blue II," are the show's most successful at balancing lightness of technique and tone with hues that either pulse or rest easy on the eyes. In fact, "Blue II" functions as a smaller version or study of "Blue III," the two together forming a duet of motifs and colors.

While the level of technical accomplishment is high in Comstock's recent work, and while it seems obvious that he has successfully created an exhibition that shares, from piece to piece, a similar sense of beauty and calmness of tenor, the absolute centrality of image and activity in the paintings feels safe, more a refuge than an extension of feelings, and one longs for him to burst out of that centrality, take the risk, and fill the plane of the canvas from top to bottom and side to side.

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David Comstock: "New Work," along with Eli Gold: "Sculpture"

Through Feb. 28 at L Ross Gallery, 5040 Sanderlin, Suite 104. Hours are 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Call 767-2200, or visit lrossgallery.com.

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