With a loose, gestural approach, North Carolina based painter Dan Beck appears to have applied paint to his canvasses with wild abandon — belying the carefully controlled values and nuanced color choices that make his compositions so effective.

His vigorous application of rough-edged shapes dissolve many of his edges, leaving key sharp edged contrasts to define forms and move the viewer’s eye through the painting. In many cases, the effect is one of forms emerging from chaos.

Beck works in oil and pastel. His primary focus is figures and faces, though he applies similar sensibilities to landscape and still life subjects.

Several of Beck’s pieces are on display until October 14, 2015 at the Beaufort Art Market in Beaufort, NC, where he recently conducted a workshop. I’ve listed other galleries below.

Garden Landscape, Louis Comfort Tiffany & Studio

Favrille-glass mosaic, 103×114 in (263×290 cm); in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Tiffany may have made this in preparation for work on the even larger Dream Garden mosaic, here in Philadelphia, on which he collaborated with Maxfield Parrish.

I love the subtle, painterly representation of the clouds.

Like a musician who prefers the emotional tone of downtempo compositions, Philadelphia based painter and printmaker Shushana Rucker finds visual fascination in the muted contrasts of overcast skies and the overlooked subjects of industrial buildings, railways and related structures.

Having had a fascination with railroads as a child, I particularly respond to her evocative portrayals of railroad tracks, along with the power lines, bridges and embankments that accompany them. In these, Rucker’s subtle palette and compressed values often emphasize the geometric and textural elements of her subjects.

Her prints likewise emphasize strongly geometric compositions and textures in her depictions of industrial buildings, rail beds and bridges, as well as the kinds of houses that one finds along the railways here in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Rucker’s work will be on display at the F.A.N. Gallery in Philadelphia in a solo show titled “Shushana Rucker – Connections and Observations“, that runs from today to October 31, 2015, with an opening reception tonight, October 2, 2015, from 5-9 PM.