"Vista" by Amanda Crandall

At first glance, Amanda Crandall’s miniatures seem just like the other pretty paintings surrounding them at the Gwenda Jay/Addington Gallery: decorative objects that are probably destined for Gold Coast apartments or suburban manses. But Crandall manages to distill both the majestic sweep of the 19th-century American landscape and our nostalgia for it into her tiny “canvases.” Seeing them in such an environment makes one question what—if anything—is wrong with work that is meant to be beautiful rather than edgy. Does “art” have to address social, cultural or political issues to merit the name?

Crandall’s paintings are certainly more engaging because they have multiple layers of meaning. They may celebrate the sublimity of nature, but their small size reminds us how little unspoiled land remains. A few depict only the tops of trees, implying that they are fragments of lost larger images, the beauty that inspired them now out of reach.

Crandall works in encaustic (an ancient technique that involves mixing pigment with beeswax) on carefully shaped blocks of wood. Her method yields opalescent vistas of beaches, as in the round, delicate Seaside 181, and forests, as in Northern Lights 189, a hexagonal image of conifers on snow-covered ground beneath a starry sky. The latter—like all of Crandall’s paintings—achieves an impressive level of detail, conjuring an entire shimmering world in a space no more than a few inches wide. You may wish you were there, but these lovely landscapes—real or imaginary—are postcards from the unattainable.—Lauren Weinberg