'Turn of the Mind' lifts painter to a new level

Two men look out from behind prison bars. One sees mud, the other stars.

Artists from John Constable to Anselm Kiefer make much of mud, but most tend to take the other tack and aspire to sky. That means the competition among sky painters, photographers and video artists is fierce, and yet Linda Davidson's drifts through colored atmospherics at the Catherine Person Gallery are dazzling.

Seattle's Davidson has always been good. She's a solid, mainstream, thick-tread-in-her-tires painter hovering somewhere between representation and abstraction. This exhibit, titled "Turn of Mind," lifts her to a new level.

"Turn of Mind" is 451 little square oil-on-wood paintings hung in a loose mass, each singular and each contributing to the virtuoso whole.

Her "Forest, With Trees" on another wall is a landscape made of language, a sentence typed into hills and dales. The words stretch to wisps or furrow themselves into mounds on typewriter papers hung together, the least busy image possible made from the words, "I am so busy." Go figure.

Through June 2. Catherine Person Gallery, 319 Third Ave. S. Closed Mondays.

-- Regina Hackett