Bockley Gallery In a mini-retrospective, eight big drawings spanning a decade (1984 to '94) show Minneapolis artist Bruce Anderson at his best: a tormented free spirit who harnessed bold colors and energetic designs to communicate inner conflicts. Most drawings feature two dueling figures -- menacing abstractions poking with rude lances, or vases shouldering each other aside, or boatlike forms blasting away with swirls of wind and flame.
In the playful "The Cat and the Fiddle," an abstracted feline clutches the instrument and howls while prancing precariously on the lip of a small green vase. Surrounded by silvery squiggles and Pollock-style dribbles of thick paint, the figures sometimes come with pets -- a wild cat, a blue salamander -- but mostly they confront their demons in dreamscapes of ripe pink and turquoise, dense navy or brilliant yellow.
Gallery owner Todd Bockley, a longtime champion of Anderson's art, said the artist has been unable to work since his hands were burned last year in a fire at his Minneapolis home. Rescued from his garage studio, these remarkable drawings survive from a happier moment in a difficult life.
Ends May 29, free. 2123 W. 21st St., Mpls. 612-377-4669 or bockleygallery.com.
Groveland Gallery and Annex Still life and landscape are the preoccupations of Twin Cities painters Carolyn Brunelle and Anne DeCoster, who find beauty along familiar paths. Brunelle arranges vases and vines in formal portraits, their slender forms and sinuous lines symbolically suggesting family groups observed through a scrim of willow. Or maybe a vase is just a vase to Brunelle, whose strength is her pitch-perfect choice of ornamental hues, persimmon against teal, navy with dappled lime.
Grand Marais' rugged coastline inspired DeCoster's vistas of rocks, deep-pooled water and crashing waves that deftly illustrate Lake Superior's turbulent energy and the North Shore's sunny vastness. Her paired views of the lake in daylight and darkness, and almost abstract close-ups of water-carved rocks, suggest the grandeur and intimacy of her ambitions.
Ends May 29. Free. 25 Groveland Terrace, Mpls. 612-377-7800 or grovelandgallery.com.
Circa Gallery Shawna Moore must have a thing for old maps and documents, because her serene abstractions suggest landscapes of cartography and literature. Poetic and glowing, their waxy encaustic surfaces are polished to a luminous sheen through which glow a delicate palimpsest of calligraphy, trailing scratch marks, lace and other intricate verbal and visual gestures. Elegantly understated.
