A stroll to three galleries

May is a perfect time for wandering around town, exploring all the goodies in galleries and enjoying the exhibitions too good to miss. Do it before the summer hiatus— when you might discover new, emerging talent but you won't find any "biggies" on exhibition.

Let's begin in Old City with Curlee Raven Holton's paintings at the ArtJaz Gallery. "Witnessing," his exhibition of recent paintings, drawings and prints, pulls the viewer into Holton's world of caring about individuals with all their idiosyncrasies. He helps us see the contrasts in life styles: affluent, impoverished, striving or resigned, encountering but not communicating. In effect his works ask: Is it inevitable? Or a failure of society?

Above and Below the Bridge captures the multiple contrasts and the fluidity of an urban culture. The Main Street Manayunk Bridge might be local to Philadelphians, but it's every bridge in every city. The loose, expressive brushstrokes and subdued palette imply a glimpse into many worlds around us.

English Only is a party scene with a focus on one woman who stands alone in the foreground, facing the viewer and amply clothed in contrast to the other women's décolleté. She might be there physically but she isn't yet part of the action. Most of the male figures form a backdrop to all the female activities. Alone in a crowd is a moment we've all experienced, and with this painting Holton brings it back to each of us. Only a fortunate few have never felt that familiar tightening of the throat and dry mouth.

Holton might live in Manayunk, but his paintings convey a worldview that's seen explicitly in Witnessing the World, which encompasses multiple cultures and their icons. It takes time and then some to figure it all out. Holton is alert to issues of discrimination and prejudice, past and present, but he goes beyond that so that we not only see a situation but also feel the subject's reaction.

Holton's paintings attract and repel, with broader significance than we can grasp at first glance. They invite repeated viewing; as with all good art, there is always something more to learn. Just open your mind and heart and look.

Two very different abstract painters

For a change of pace, try the Rosenfeld Gallery. Here Marianne Mitchell and Constance Moore Simon are exhibiting two very different types of abstract paintings.

Mitchell's lush acrylics on panel and oil pastels on paper admit us to a world of color and shapes that bear no relevance to familiar objects but seem to encompass the world. I've never seen such sensuous acrylic paintings, with layers of colors interacting and almost pleading with you to enter. Mitchell has built up the layers to textures that begged to be touched or acknowledged. Her diptychs, Meditation and Sonoma Trail, juxtapose colors and forms until they seem inevitable. Mitchell, a perennial artist in the Rosenfeld Gallery, continuously develops her personal approach with courage and conviction.

Simon's gouache paintings on paper are tightly controlled objects of design, occasionally displaying an expert version of trompe l'oeil, such as "Indian Stamp." Simon is a meticulous designer whose cubes are so perfectly shaded and proportioned that they could exist in the real world. It will be interesting to see whether this orientation will lead to the path forged by Bruce Pollock or Astrid Bowlby's markings for a new universe.

Exploding beyond the surface

One more stop takes you uptown to the Schmidt/Dean Gallery to view Jan Baltzell's oil-on-mylar paintings and Michael Gallagher's new acrylic-on-panel paintings that explode beyond the surface in a torrent of garish colors and childlike forms that look more like Chelsea than staid old Philadelphia. Gallagher has come a long way from those academic still lifes of former years. It's a new vision for him, and one that promises exciting ventures for the 21st century.

Jan Baltzell's paintings give you room to breathe in the hothouse environs of Philadelphia's color field abstraction. She has her own palette of cool colors, one intensifying the other, floating on a white sea, revealing juxtapositions and transitions that are felt more than seen. Looking at these paintings, you feel as if you can breathe more deeply and more easily. They are meditations on a transient world, a moment to treasure, in the midst of cacophony.

These three galleries should whet your appetite, but don't stop now. More than 60 galleries are filled with art by living artists, created for us to experience and for future generations to learn what it was like to be alive in this era. And don't forget the Old City Stroll and Sidewalk Sale from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on May 16 and 17.