American artists — from the painters of the Hudson River School to the influential Andrew Wyeth — have long depicted this country’s vast landscape as simultaneously a place of lonely desolation and of awe-inspiring grandeur. Following in this tradition, Andrea Kowch creates gorgeous and eerie acrylic paintings of open-skied pastoral landscapes. Inspired by a deep fascination with the natural world, Kowch’s works also tap into a common feeling of uneasiness many of us have toward the American rural – a place that is iconic for its beauty but that is also often associated with tedium, isolation and a clinging to negative aspects of the country’s past.
Wooden-faced women that look a little something like American Gothic meets Alice in Wonderland populate these tableaux and provide an element of both humor and pathos. Kowch achieves striking effects by juxtaposing the subdued colors of her ashen fields and skies with sudden flashes of color, such as the flaming red of a brightly painted barn. In the same way, her subjects’ melancholic gloom is punctured by quirky details such as a breakfast table strewn with birds in the playfully titled painting The Visitors. These storybook elements serve to deliver Kowch’s women from what might otherwise seem a desolate existence.
Andrea Kowch’s retrospective “Dream Fields” is currently on view at the Muskegon Museum of Art in Michigan.
There's a certain feeling that is triggered when the familiar is distorted and brought into the realm of the unfamiliar. The idea of the uncanny is exactly what Hungarian artist 
In Jillian Denby’s voyeuristic, yet expansive paintings, people engage in both everyday activity as well as the unexpected. When viewed as a whole, her scenes offer a connectedness between its parties that each likely couldn’t see themselves. With works like "Genius of the River Chases Away The Frenzy of Art," the reality of what’s human and what’s art itself is blurred. “Nature can be overwhelming and landscape a little removed. With that in mind and viewing it directly, I try to acknowledge its presence, while conceptualizing a fragile observational dialogue,” the artist has said.
In Louie Cordero’s surreal and riveting paintings, the artist’s command of texture and mood sets his work apart. Cordero, hailing from the Philippines, is currently featured in a group show at Gallery Poulsen titled “Inoperative Halo,” along with painter Eric White and sculptor Jud Bergeron. (The show runs through Dec. 21 at the Copenhagen venue.)
Amy Crehore brings her joyful paintings to La Luz de Jesus Gallery with the aptly named "Bathers, Buskers & Cats." The show, running through Dec. 1 at the Los Angeles space, offers a set of oil on linen works that move through time, cultures, and touches of surrealism, all while staying true to that title.