Whitney Bedford’s newest exhibition “West of Eden” at Susanne Vielmetter, is compulsory viewing for anyone who thinks they know anything about painting. Mind you, Bedford’s elegantly crafted oils on canvas of mostly landscapes, flora and fauna and the like, are fraught with tension and a haunting, indeed vaguely beguiling quality that makes them appear simultaneously beautiful and menacing. The most striking works in the show are five smaller paintings that depict a desert terrain of soft pinks, punctuated by more graphic pen-and-ink marks like the spiny eruptions of cacti in an otherwise serene terrain.

Susanne Vielmetter; Los Angeles Projects

6006 Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232

Show runs through January 23, 2016