Visual Arts

The raw linen canvas that backs Jackie Tileston's new paintings at Holly Johnson Gallery has the soft brown color of aged silk and is reminiscent of Chinese landscape painting. Thin washes of gold, green and brown, along with dry pigment rubbed into the linen, provide a sense of deep space, against which she paints assertively in oil and puddles of enamel paint that crinkle on the surface. Glitter, used judiciously, lends sparkle.

Holly Johnson Gallery

Oil and mixed media on linen, The Uppermost Highest Section, by Jackie Tileston

The landscapes Ms. Tileston suggests are stacked vertically onto the generously scaled paintings, with densely painted areas representing striated palisades or possibly old lava flows – in colors having little to do with nature.

Keeping with the Asian motif, she transfers book or magazine illustrations of Buddhist sculpture onto the canvas – or in some cases, advertisements for cheap Asian-toy and food packaging.

She explores other continental themes as well. A large area of misty green in one work brings to mind sublime 19th-century depictions of the American landscape, and in another work, a transferred image of an American Luminist painting emerges, complete with pioneers, wagons and majestic mountains.

When not playing with landscape, Ms. Tileston uses a scattering of calligraphic lines spread across the canvas like an exotic sea creature, or possibly an erupting volcano. Such works demonstrate the amount of sophisticated vision and layering of effects that go into carefully constructed images of spontaneity.

Through Oct. 11 at Holly Johnson Gallery, 1411 Dragon St. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturday. Free. 214-369-0169. www.hollyjohnsongallery.com.

Rosemary Meza-DesPlas has been incorporating human hair into her work for several years. She hand-sews it onto paper and canvas, where it makes a stitched brown line that often terminates in bristly, untied ends. As an art material, hair is overloaded with connotations, and Ms. Meza-DesPlas uses it for elegant and funky effects.

Mighty Fine Arts Gallery

Portrait of Frida Kahlo by Rosemary Meza-DesPlas , Steady, As She Goes

In her exhibition at Mighty Fine Arts, "Woman Under the Influence," she's created a series of portraits of well-known female artists presented in their role as a wife. Running throughout the portraits are lines of hair, used either to create realistic physical details, evocative props that surround the figures or elaborate patterns that cover the canvas. Pastels, watercolors and acrylic paint shape each image.

The subjects she has chosen – Alice Neel, Louise Bourgeois, Lee Krasner, Ana Mendieta, Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe – are recognizable either by face or by the elements of their work included in the portraits. Ms. Meza-DesPlas has divided them into two categories: good wives and bad wives. Given what we know of their well-documented lives and often volatile relationships with their artist husbands, the portraits allow us to consider the shifting social rules that go into such categorical determinations.

Each portrait also comes with a commercially produced name patch, the type young girls might buy for their jackets or backpacks. The assertive patches keep things on a first-name, personal basis, a position that has always been a strong point of this artist's growing body of work.

Through Oct 26 at Mighty Fine Arts Gallery, 419 N. Tyler. Hours: noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays and by appointment. Free. 214-942-5241. www.mfagallery.com.

Aaron Parazette's new abstract paintings at Dunn and Brown Contemporary provide for some serious "California dreaming." The Houston-based painter, who's been exhibiting nationally since the early 1990s, bases his flawlessly executed paintings on such motifs as ocean waves, paint splashes and wallpaper designs.

Dunn and Brown Contemporary

Acrylic on canvas, Solid, by Aaron Parazette

For the "Surf Trip" show, he appropriated words from the surfing world, such as "Groovy," "Indicator," "Fluid" and "Surf Cat," and used computer graphics programs to scramble and morph them into sharp-edged, snazzy designs. He then painted them in saturated, acrylic color onto canvases ranging from 40 by 40 inches to 80 by 64 inches.

Mr. Parazette's colors run the gamut from hot to cool. Paintings include green and orange, shades of blue and earth tones – perhaps beach tones would be a more apt description.

In each painting, a thin double line of contrasting pinstripes around each element causes the designs to pop. The letters, no longer identifiable by font, twist sinuously down the canvas, stack up like blocks or appear in reverse. Some paintings are more legible from across the room than from up close, but legibility is not the ultimate goal. "Surf Trip" blends eye-catching graphic design and art-savvy abstraction into a visual pleasure zone.

Through Oct. 18 at Dunn and Brown Contemporary, 5020 Tracy St. Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Free. 214-521-4322. www.dunnandbrown.com.