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Our gallery artists spurn wide angles for cropped compositions, centered subjects, and shallow spaces. Close focus allows them to create studied explorations of botanical beauty and tranquil moments.

A flower painting by Anne Ward is both still life and self-portrait. She grew the flowers, designed the tablecloth, created the arrangement, and painted the tableau in her home. Farm to canvas.

In the graphite drawing Vestige, Susan Petty memorializes a tree stump. She ennobles the remainder with time-intensive cross-hatched lines, dramatically leaving the bottom half of the paper blank to depict cast light. With the larger landscape cropped out, the emphasis is entirely on the stump, allowing the viewer to fill in the tree that was.

Every detail matters with a 4x4 canvas. Counterintuitively, Dana Hooper depicts most of the cottage in dark grey shadow. Creamy whites, yellows, and oranges illuminate the sides, a dramatic use of chiaroscuro in miniature for a humble abode.

Rincon Mountain looks like a hill in Robert Abbott’s Rincon Looking South. The tiny marks for trees indicate size and distance. But with his straight-on view and thick paint, he pulls the focus to the surface and brings the peak within reach.

Patricia Doyle’s Choppy Night is not about a suspended moment but an entire night. Her dynamic brush strokes convey the waves, the shadow, the light, and time.

An orange flower appears and dissolves into the surrounding washes in Marilee Krause’s Gymnopedie 3. Petals and stems are alluded to with an outline and staccato pencil marks. The dance of the title poetically refers to the flower depicted but is also a documentation of Krause’s performance of brush strokes and lines.

Randall David Tipton’s paintings retain evidence of his experiments. The slick paper resists precise markings. His paint application suggests where it should be, often pooling into happy accidents. He unites form and function with November Leaves; falling petals reveal bare branches and nature beyond our control.

—Cynthia Stahl