The Galleries : Santa Monica

Bay Area artist Squeak Carnwath is a kind of cosmic cheerleader, like the rock singer Patti Smith. She explores the cyclical behavior of bees as a metaphor for the benign predictability of the universe. Her paintings depict both the physical world and the collective unconscious as a sunny, overgrown garden where we work and play beneath the loving light of sun and moon.

Carnwath’s thematic simplicity is reflected in the look of her work, which resembles an elegant form of graffiti. Crudely drawn, inscribed with poetry lettered in a clumsy hand, this series is built around a vocabulary of rudimentary symbols including trees, eyes, bees, flowers and crosses--symbols even children can understand. Carnwath’s work is rooted in a faith in the unmediated wisdom of children, and the childlike quality of her work is underscored by repeated references to honey bees, which put one in mind of the fictional authority on both honey and bees, Winnie-the-Pooh.

Employing a palette of muted colors, Carnwath develops the surfaces of her canvases to the point that they have the weathered, broken-in quality of an old quilt, then finishes them with a yellowed varnishing that lends them the appearance of having been dipped in honey. The final results glow with the warmth of late afternoon sun. (Dorothy Goldeen Gallery, 1547 9th St., to March 18.)