Santa Monica Area

Lonely folks at the seashore, gazing at theatrical sunsets or adrift in small boats, are the subjects of veteran painter Leo Robinson’s recent works. Adapting themes beloved of the German Romantics and American Transcendentalists, Robinson too often lets them sink to the level of an earnest art-colony painter. If he intended contemporary irony (pollution ruining the view, say) those flaming skies at dusk don’t really do it.

“At Night�--a man wading in water under a royal blue sky who concentrates intently on a jumping fish on the line--looks like the work of someone in the ‘40s who was intrigued by the stillness of Hopper’s figures.

The better canvases offer a whiff of eccentricity or a crystallized anecdotal content. In “Men With Umbrellas,� three gents in suits, spaced widely on the sand (Robinson’s figures tend to keep their distance from one other) promenade with their unlikely parasols.

In “Voyage,� a glowing sky creates a fleet of red clouds and turns people at the shore’s edge into a line of blue silhouettes. The flaring skirt of the girl in the center adds a vintage feel and the uplifted hand of the woman at the far right-hand edge suggests a private farewell. (Ruth Bachofner Gallery, 926 Colorado Ave., to April 9.)