HOLLYWOOD

Patricia Patterson lives in Southern California but her heart is in the Aran Islands. For the last 10 years she has spent vacations and sabbaticals near the western coast of Ireland, getting to know island people and soaking up their isolated and apparently pure environment. Now she has recycled those experiences into paintings and objects in a show called “An Cisteanach” (The Kitchen).

The installation reads more as social research run through an illustrator’s sensibility than as aesthetic essence. Looking at the show requires constant shifts of perception between painted pictures of people and real wooden furniture, tile floors and facsimiles of a fireplace and old-fashioned oven. Peering through actual red-framed windows and a red door to a long horizontal landscape painting works smoothly, but switching from a blue table and black chairs to paintings of angular people in cozy kitchens makes the art seem disjointed. We want the people to be three-dimensional, or at least painted-relief constructions.

Despite such problems, Patterson has created an arresting situation, bound together by color (predominantly vermilion, light green and blue)and visual clarity. The project is a success insofar as she conveys domestic warmth within simple, rural surroundings and shares her enchantment. What the installation lacks is resolution of formal and conceptual elements. (Newspace Gallery, 5241 Melrose Ave., to March 2.).