Calamities Conform to the Canvas

Roger Brown knows, first-hand, about the darker forces lurking beneath pretty surfaces. The renowned painter moved from his longtime home in Chicago several years ago to the sunny seaside town of La Conchita, just in time to witness the massive mudslides, which nearly consumed his adopted hometown.

He couldn’t have asked for a better subject. Locals might even wonder if the artist didn’t bring a bit of dour luck with him. Brown’s work during the last several years has been characterized by its clever treatment of potentially ominous scenes, leading some observers to assume he’s an artist with a message to impart, a social commentator.

The artist shrugs off such interpretations, claiming a purely visual agenda in his work.

He tends to favor landscapes in silhouette or in conspicuous symmetry, in which depersonalized figures are trapped in compromising situations.

But it’s not all that dire. Brown slathers on enough comical elements and arty in-jokes that the paintings contain no more dread than an average Tex Avery cartoon.

“California Dreamin,’ ” his fascinating exhibition at Contemporary Arts Forum in Santa Barbara--and his first major show in the area since moving here--deals, almost gleefully, with calamities we have known.

California emerges as a fascinating place to live, but a place where dreams might be dashed on the rocks, where a giant killer crab (either an existential metaphor or an actual B-movie beast) might spoil a day at the beach, and where homes might quiver without notice, as in his painting, “Dancing Houses--the Earthquake of 1994.”

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He hits home with “The Great La Conchita Landslide,” where trees tumble from cliffs like little cartoon bombs, over a mud bank that resembles a giant tongue. Here, nature is depicted as a hungry entity, indiscriminate about consuming human settlements that might be in its path.

“Earthquake in a Small Town” depicts a block of seismically challenged houses as if from a bird’s-eye view. But the horizon line turns sharply upward, as if seismic forces have made the Earth box-like, and upended the horizon line as we know it.

But, apart from the sinister punch line of the image, it’s a fine painting, a crafty assembly of visual lines, forms and colors within a composition.

And there lies the heart of Brown’s art. No matter what the content of his paintings, he’s intrigued by his own language of form.

Born in Alabama and based in Chicago starting in the ‘60s, Brown developed a style that takes inspiration from the simple forms and stylistic leaps of faith he found in folk art.

His paintings, innocent-looking things on the surface, take on qualities that have been co-opted from different schools of modern art. He uses self-consciously blocky forms and commercial art techniques from pop art, repeating patterns from op art and pattern painting, and adds a wry narrative spin, which made his art resonate nicely within the ‘80s art scene.

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Most of the paintings in this show were done in the last few years, during Brown’s time as a Californian, but a few early works hint at how his work has evolved.

“Sequoia,” from 1971, pits majestic trees against other vertical, non-indigenous elements in the scene--mainly, oil rigs and tourists.

“Cliff Dwelling” from 1973 suggests the Rincon area. In it, figures with no particular place to go dot a shallow field. Brown’s fiendish fun with shadows and illogical light sources prevail, as the figures cast shadows in the wrong direction.

It all reflects on the artist’s formal playfulness, and his willingness to use humanity and landscapes as artistic putty--call it silly putty.

The human element is reduced to a pack of ocean-going ants in “Coast and Cloud (Waiting for the Wave),” in which surfers sit like insignificant specks in wait for the forces of nature to sweep them up.

Surfing suddenly takes on a metaphorical aspect, suggesting that we landlocked Californians are also lying in wait, vaguely anxious about the next natural disaster that will sweep us out of our complacency.

Brown’s dark comic flair is seen, as well, in the hilarious “Mr. Gotta Go Faster Than Anyone Else,” in which a couple in a too-fast car peel across a mostly black canvas, with storm clouds in the distance.

In silhouette, the woman, sporting an early model hairdo, plays back-seat driver to the frazzled man behind the wheel, urging moderation on their trip into an apparent abyss.

More recent pieces depart from his usual style, combining the flat surfaces of paintings with sculptural objects. “Denuded Landscapes with Imitation Wood Vases” from 1996, plays off the Southwestern decor scheme in abstract swatches of color and tacky pseudo-wood ceramics, placed on a shelf at the bottom of the work.

Perhaps he’s commenting on the tendency to tame nature, to make it user-friendly, or perhaps he’s just found a new way of mixing and matching visuals that interest him. Or both.

Despite the tragicomic buzz off Brown’s art, gallows humor and irreverence are not his main objectives. At this point, Brown has reached such a level of maturity that his work appears giddy and sublime, socio-ecological and abstract, all at once. This gallery show lacks for neither wacky fun nor painterly aplomb.

DETAILS

* WHAT: Roger Brown, “California Dreamin’.”

* WHEN: Through Jan. 26. Gallery hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 12-5 p.m. Sunday.

* WHERE: At Contemporary Arts Forum, 653 Paseo Nuevo, Santa Barbara.

* CALL: 966-5373.