Maggi Brown

Long a staple of Boston's art scene, Maggi Brown probes the limits of her own consciousness in a new exhibit now open at the Barbara Krakow Gallery on Newbury St. In a series of related yet fiercely distinct oil-on-canvas paintings, Brown attempts to capture the mood or feeling of elements as disparate as a song, a person, a place, a dream. The result is an intensely introspective, personal and somewhat cryptic show that both begs for explanation and needs none.

Brown says the inspiration for her latest work is the ill-defined and enigmatic intersection of consciousness and the verbalization of consciousness. Her paintings physically illustrate this juxtaposition by representing the elements of conscious experience on separate pieces of canvas, which are then attached to form the final product. With the exception of one painting, each work uses a panel of scrawled words and letters to illustrate the verbal thoughts running through Brown's head as she comes into contact with the painting's subject. Coupled with the swirling, monochromatic blend of color on the other panels, the effect is both stunning and somewhat chaotic.

The most memorable work in the exhibit is a painting entitled "Farfalli" (Italian for butterfly), which substitutes a single symbol for letters. A large panel of soothing blue and gray is framed on top by a section of roughly textured deeper color and on the sides by narrow panels covered with the outlines of tiny butterflies, each hand-traced on the canvas. Though the painting is softer in both color and style than the others in the show, its effect is no less dramatic. For those who have sometimes felt that words cannot fully capture the essence of an experience, the painting-and the show-is worth a look.