Abstractions in Sumptuous Color

Inspired by Nature: Abstract Expression, the show at Lakeville’s White Gallery, might better have been entitled Expressions, since each of the three women artists in the show have entirely different ways of relating to nature.

Perhaps most fascinating are four watercolors by Terri L. Moore from her Iceberg Series. Intrigued by an iceberg’s existence in both air and water, Moore has made gorgeous pictures on Yupo paper, a plastic like Mylar. The watercolor runs on the paper, shifts and often changes color when dry. Moore renders the balance line of the icebergs, the waterline really, as a sort of horizon.

Moore’s “Simultaneous,” an oil on canvas, also divides sky and water with a distinct line; shades of blue that become almost black. (It reminds me of a $4.5 million Andreas Gursky photograph of the Rhine, with its horizontal balance between land and water.) Her “Ghost Circle,” on the other hand, is all gauzy white surrounding a mysterious gray circle that seems to draw us inside.

Joan Jardine is a phenomenal colorist. Now about 80 years old, she seems to have found new freedom in making her pictures. They blaze with brilliant, often surprising hues; and often you can identify — or think you can — what she is abstracting.

In “Abstract 1,” an oil on paper, a boat and a sail appear in the flurry of blues and browns. In the oddly titled “Autumn,” another oil, blues and lavenders are shocked by peony-like white circles with crimson centers. Her “Untitled 10,” an oil on cradled board, drips with wonderful reds, salmons and grays.

Devra Freelander is a young artist with degrees from Oberlin College and the Rhode Island School of Design. Like most artists just starting to build a career, she uses affordable materials — cement, plaster and fluorescent acrylic — to make sculptures that combine geology with symbols of our new digital world. Best are two “Mineral Analog” pieces: jagged-edged plaster blocks holding embedded discs, one magenta the other lime-green, that filter light and even change color intensity.

Elsewhere, Freelander shows large, single-color discs of fiberglass or resin, coated with enamel or epoxy acrylic. They are oddly compelling.

Inspired by Nature: Abstract Expression continues at The White Gallery through July 17. The gallery is located at 342 Main St. in Lakeville, CT, and is open Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 860-435-1029.