First Friday: Byron Anway paintings at Kiechel Fine Arts, Stellar Small Prints at Constellation Studios

Combining recollections, historic structures, clouds and sheets blowing in the wind, Byron Anway has created a handful of evocative, spiritually tinged paintings that are gathered in “Landscape and Memory,” now on view at Kiechel Fine Art.

The only figurative painting in the exhibition is a self-portrait — Anway, an assistant professor of practice at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Art, Art History and Design, has moved from his early traditional portraiture and his acclaimed series of works about crowds and politicians fighting, to landscape, symbolism and abstraction.

But that shift comes from the same place as Anway’s previous work.

“My artwork incorporates personal stories and contemporary historical events to understand the world,” he writes in an artist’s statement. “In that way, my practice closely mimics the study of Epistemology. I try to understand the differences between opinion and knowledge.

“I draw from memory and imagination to tell emotionally authentic and personal coming of age stories. Whether showing a disparate world full of kinetic human energy or an introspective abstraction with space for deep thinking, these new works draw on themes of spirituality, cultural relativism, and adventure.”

The memories are found in Anway’s “Labyrinth” paintings that recollect the ancient structures from his time in Europe and turn them into meditative studies in curves, lines and ovals while another historic structure is hinted at in “Chartres,” one of the cloud series that finds a cloud-like structure hovering over a wire-like labyrinth.

Another insightful series involves windows, openings that look out through translucent structures to frame distant landscapes, departing from realism to question what it is we really see and how we see it.

The show’s centerpiece is “Three Flags,” a large, 52-inch by 90-inch depiction of three sheets, seemingly attached to an unseen line, blowing in the wind. The sheets are also translucent, revealing the clouds in the sky behind — and, in doing so, pulling together the elements of “Landscape and Memory.”

Also on view at Kiechel Fine Art is a small section of works by Dale Nichols and a gallery full of paintings by the late Dan Howard.