Texture, form on Maine coast

Edna Andrade, now a grande dame of Philadelphia's art world, is known for her eye-tingling geometric abstractions, painted over several decades of a 50-year career. In fact, her optical paintings will be featured in a major retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art opening Jan. 18. But in "Rocks and Cliffs," a complementary show at the Locks Gallery, geology replaces geometry. A mix of early and recent paintings reveals a surprise: Andrade's abiding fascination with the rocky seacoast of Maine, expressed in representational form.

A few carefully executed works on toned paper from 1953, in pastel and acrylic, do little more than set the terms of Andrade's attraction to the austere landscape of rocks, ocean and sky. Three slightly later watercolors (from 1953-55) show a breathtaking confidence, with dark, strongly brushed rock forms reminiscent of Marsden Hartley, another great painter of Maine, against wide, loose swaths of sand and water.

Apparently, Andrade has been busy, because the rest of the show features good-sized drawings and paintings from the last few years with views of distinctively weathered rock faces rendered in exacting detail. Part of the pleasure here lies in seeking connections between these and her more famous abstract works, which were often painted in grid formats. Nature, in the form of striations and erosion marks on the rocks, has offered Andrade a roughly gridded surface, which she emphasizes with high-contrast light and shadow. One imagines that the very multifariousness of the rock and cliff surfaces provided the requisite challenge to this painstaking artist.

Flatly painted backgrounds - one a peachy tan, another a slate gray - telegraph that the intention isn't exactly realism, in spite of all the rigorous rendering. These are smart, modernist studies in texture and form, radiating a strange all-over calm. Hats off to an artist who has maintained artistic vigor well into her 80s.

Locks Gallery, 600 Washington Square South. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Through Jan. 25. 215-629-1000 or www.locksgallery.com.