Eugene painter brings some pictures home from France.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

At the opening reception for "Margaret Coe in Brittany," which wraps up next weekend at the Karin Clarke Gallery, an acquaintance of mine stood for a long time in front of ``La Vallee los Grees No. 1,'' a Coe landscape that shows a distant French chateau in spring.

The acquaintance - a woman, let's say, of a certain age - explained that the picture reminded her of the chateau where her husband spent much of World War II, hidden away by the French resistance, after his B-17 was shot down during a daylight bombing raid.

It was a terribly romantic story, one involving wine and women and a young man thought dead by his parents for a full year and a half before he turned up alive after all in the liberation of Paris. My friend's telling of it reminded me how evocative good painting can be.

Coe, a career artist in Eugene who won a juror's choice award at this year's Mayor's Art Show, received an art residency to spend five weeks painting last spring in Rochefort, France, a village in Brittany.

There, working quickly and loosely, she turned out some 20 canvases, recording city walls, church spires, urban rooftops and plowed fields around her. At the end of the month she carried the paintings home, some with paint still damp, rolled up in three large mailing tubes - to the chagrin of unamused airline officials.

It was a spring well spent, from the looks of things. Coe either enjoyed or imagined fantastic light on the French landscape - I suspect both things are true - and all these paintings share an inviting luminescence that speaks of quiet breezes, balmy mornings and warm afternoons. They are indeed evocative, and you can practically enjoy a small European vacation yourself by standing in the downtown Eugene gallery and taking them all in, from their engaging color to the soothing and somewhat familiar scenes.

Sometimes they're too familiar. It may be impossible to paint in France without the legacy of Impressionism hanging over your canvas, and a few of these paintings, especially ones involving sailboats, link a little too closely to the past for my taste.

But others are more daring. In a painting titled ``Chapel and Fields,'' for example, the small chapel runs a little uncomfortably off the bottom of the canvas while its tower bisects the landscape above, leading the eye straight up a row of green trees; the horizon tilts oddly and the whole painting lurches off balance and still works, splendidly.

Several other paintings play with these vertical motifs, usually in the form of a road running straight up the page; though in a cityscape titled ``Elven,'' a church tower and a leafless tree form a dividing line just right of dead center in the canvas, pointing into the sky and beyond. It's as if Coe wants to lead us up and out, or up and away, from our usual day-to-day reality.

Coe's painting is accomplished and trustworthy, regularly rewarding the effort of careful looking. I enjoyed her view of France, though - perhaps not surprisingly - her French landscapes occasionally look for all the world like Oregon.

Showing at the same time at the gallery are several of Coe's paintings from what she calls the "Blues Series," a much more urban and turbulent body of work that looks at people and jazz. Their energy nicely complements the serenity of the French countryside.

EXHIBIT REVIEW

Margaret Coe in Brittany

What: Oil paintings from the French countryside by Eugene artist Margaret Coe

Where: Karin Clarke Gallery, 760 Willamette St.

When: Through Saturday

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday

CAPTION(S):

``Rochefort East Portal'' (27 inches by 32 inches, oil on canvas) is one of the images Margaret Coe painted during a fellowship last spring in Brittany, France.