Review

"Bridge over Rushing Water," Acrylic on Canvas.

Barbara Stoll

10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Images Gallery
7320 W. 80th St.
Overland Park, KS
913.232.7113

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday
Runs through: Jan. 15

Artist's site: http://www.barbarastoll.com
Gallery site: http://www.imagesartgallery.org

The streets are still snow-packed and treacherous, so it's anybody's guess whether Images Gallery will be open today as scheduled. (Best bet: Call ahead if you're out and planning to be in Downtown Overland Park.)

If the gallery is open, you'll find plenty of warmth inside — not only the physical sort, but the emotional and visual varieties as well, provided by Barbara Stoll's acrylic paintings. If weather won't permit either (a) regular gallery hours or (b) travel to the venue, there still will be time to catch the latest group show before it closes on Jan. 15.

Stoll, one of the three currently featured artists at the co-op gallery (along with watercolorist Bess Duston and glass artist Rhoda J. Powers), favors a sun-splashed palette and an Impressionist style. As a result, the inside front wall at Images, where Stoll's paintings hang, is full of bright color. It might be December outside, but the calendar inside runs mainly from March through September.

Bridge over Rushing Water, today's featured work, teeters at the point where summer falls off into autumn. It suggests a fine warm day, with all of that sunlight, but the gold and orange leaves hint that the nights are getting cooler and longer.

Stoll, whose art is informed and inspired by her world travels, draws on more than one sense when she creates.

Wherever I find inspiration, Stoll writes, I lean on a tree or sit on a bench with my sketchbook and small watercolor palette in hand and start to paint. It may be the light falling on water or a certain breeze in the air that inspires me. I try to find a sense of every place.

Her skill in capturing time and place offers cold-weary viewers a welcome respite ... and more than one reason to linger in the warmth of the gallery and of her works.