Born in Guadalajara, Mexico and currently living in California, where he studied art, Paul Bond brings to his light-filled style of Magic Realism an obvious affection for the reality-teasing twists of Magritte, and a fascination with certain repeated themes.

In particular, he finds ongoing variations on the theme of piled rocks, rendered with a tactile sense of texture and form and with playful indications of scale and place.

Objects in Bond’s painted worlds often float, at once defying and defined by gravity, arranged in geometric swirls that suggest invisible physics in their apparent movement.

When viewing the galleries on Bond’s website, be aware of the second gallery page, accessed from a link at the top of the page. He also has a blog, and offers limited edition prints as well as a book collection and other printed items.

Bond’s work will be on view at the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts, July 5 – August 31, 2015.

Mary Jane Ansell, a UK painter who I first featured in 2013, is now represented here in the US by Arcadia Contemporary in New York.

Her elegantly refined portraits — primarily of young women — reveal their subjects in nuanced touches of diffuse light. They usually carry an implied narrative element, adding depth and a kind of emotional resonance, particularly when they appear to engage directly with the viewer.

Ansell builds her paintings in a traditional classical method, starting with a charcoal sketch, then a grisaille, built up with layers of transparent glazes as well as more direct opaque passages. There is a brief description with a couple of images here, and a FAQ page here.

Ansell’s work will be on display at Arcadia Contemporary in a solo show titled “Liberty’s Arc” from June 18th to July 10th, 2015.

Based in New Jersey, in the Philadelphia region, Charles Newman had my attention immediately with his portrayal of chairs on rooftops in the city (images above, top), an image that so strongly reminds me of my top-floor Walnut street apartment when I was an art student it’s uncanny.

Newman’s appeal goes much farther for me that that, of course; his brusque, textural paint application, muted value relationships and carefully controlled color give his work a kind of ghostly pull. Everything, even interiors, seems atmospheric. In contrast to so many artists whose work is shouting for attention, Newman’s paintings whisper, drawing you closer, inviting you in with intrigue and suggestion.

His compositions are strongly geometric, large shapes and value masses predominate, and light, even bright daylight, seems tamed and controlled in service of the composition.

Newman works from life, but his immediacy seems to act through a sophisticated filter of painterly choice, registering the most important elements and indicating them with deft reduction of the inessential.

On his own website, be aware that there is a third level to the Portfolio drop-down navigation that is easy to miss. The Plein Air section has several sub-sections, and it’s certainly worth coming back and investigating each.

His work will be on display in a solo show titled “Charles Newman – New Paintings” at the F.A.N. Gallery, here in Philadelphia, until June 27, 2015.

There is an interview with the artist on the F.A.N. Gallery blog.