Sheen, Polish, and Social Substance

Some artists follow a purposefully wandering, evolving path, seeking out new expressive avenues as they go. Others find their groove and stick to it, honing and refining a particular, familiar subject or style. Santa Barbara painter Leslie Lewis Sigler belongs to the latter category. Over many years, in many exhibitions locally and beyond, she has become closely identified and respected for her super-realist paintings of silverware — heirlooms given their close-up — with mesmerizing optical effects and dazzling iridescent surfaces.

Sigler’s current show at Sullivan Goss, with the telling moniker Kindred, presents more of the same imagery and technical finesse we have come to know and love, but with a slightly thickening plot this time out. The small gathering of new paintings in the entrance gallery culls paintings of silverware and the ceramic finery of China — the good stuff — alongside paintings of tablecloths and dainty fabric pieces.

True to the show’s title and the paintings’ often evocative titles, the paintings feel like “kindred spirits,” while a fresh approach to connotative narratives and possible kinfolk associations enter into the equation.

While adhering to her tendency for a tight focus and detailed attention to specific objects/subjects, Sigler also plays with the inherent contrast of the soft, malleable materiality of fabric and the hard, fixed, and reflective nature of ceramic and silver. Fabric presents its own challenges to a painter, which she handily acquits herself with her customary photorealist aplomb in the small canvases “You Never,” “You’re So,” and “Nevertheless.”   

Vintage silverware “portraits,” long a specialty of the painter, are in the house, from the six-part “Silver Pair” series, the painting of a handful of implements, “The Partygoers,” and two shiny items from her long-standing and slyly dubbed “Silver Spoon” series — including “Silver Spoon #272 — The Adonis.” Knowing the title, we look at said spoon in a different way, sniffing out heroic tendencies.

Titles matter here, hinting at the social dynamics of gatherings around the tables where these objects live. A combination table setting “Both/And” suggests the delicate art of groupings in art and social life, while “How’s Your Mom” envisions humbler plates and utensils against a gingham tablecloth.

From another angle, we are drawn into the notion of these objects being anthropomorphized, peering at the secret life of objects themselves. Some of the most interesting paintings in the gallery bring the three elements — cloth, ceramics, silver — together, compounding the possible interpretative impressions.

“Grace” is an especially subtle composition, graced by a poetry of light, shade, and harmonious elements in an afternoon tea setting. A shadow gently encroaching from the upper right corner of the composition implies time’s passage and the waning of a leisurely tea time.

In short, these seemingly staid and stately paintings convey traces of life and mysteries beneath their pristine surfaces. Sigler’s elegant tableware paintings are essentially still life studies, but with shimmering parallel identities moving beyond stillness.

Kindred by Leslie Lewis Sigler is on view at Sullivan Goss through July 28. sullivangoss.com