Creating large-scale figurative watercolor works is somewhat unique in contemporary Los Angeles art. Lena Moross is an exception, painting evocative portraits and full figures in this format.

“Forgive and Forget” is a beautiful numbered series of 13 works using a color palette that focuses on blues, yellows, pink, gray, and mauve. The works, each filled with nuanced facial expressions, show people at their desks, conducting meetings or lounging at home on a couch.

Stylistically, both in clothing type and furniture style, her subjects evoke another era, the 1960s, perhaps. Moments of whimsy and nostalgia light up these works, which offer a rather blissful view of a work-a-day, upper middle class world, with maybe a hint of irony thrown in.

In F&F #12, a man in a red jacket—a standout among the more muted color palette Moross presents, is riding a horse facing outward, while a woman stands holding a trophy, and another man, probably the horse wrangler, appears from behind. There seems to be a disconnect, with the holder of the prize more moved by it than the rider on the horse, who appears aloof to it.

F&F#9 reveals a vast audience of gray-suited men in the background and a woman in a dark mauve suit in the foreground. She looks out at the viewer, a somewhat bemused expression on her face. Is she considering that she is the only woman in the room? Proud to conduct a lecture to this sea of grey men? Aware of the irony of it?

The domestic scene in F&F#8 features a gold couch as the most dominant subject. Wearing jacket and dress identical in color to their sofa, a man and woman relax upon it, both smiling, the woman more coyly, as if they’re thinking “look what we have here.” The expression exudes “the cat that got the canary,” a feeling made more pertinent due to the color of the sofa and their clothes comes to mind.

Also on exhibit are a series of graceful smaller works, rabbits in magician’s hats, playing card figures, small dogs and women looking outward at landscapes in profile. Her works are intensely character driven, visual short stories rendered with adroit brushstrokes, that allow the artist to reveal the secret hearts of many lives. Moross is a master.