During this month’s ArtWalk, I found myself standing next to the abstract painter Jaq Chartier at Dianna Molzan’s show of paintings at Gallery 4Culture, The Future is Our Only Goat. We both found ourselves perplexed and mesmerized by them, and couldn’t exactly say why.

The show closes Friday. I want to get back down there to try to make heads or tails of these paintings (and, maybe, the title, which puts me in mind of the Holy Ghost).

Molzan was one of the three founders of 1506 Projects on Capitol Hill (see Katie Kurtz’s 2004 piece on 1506), which I believe is, sadly, now defunct. Molzan left Seattle last year for Los Angeles. (I have an email in to Molzan to find out more, including whether the gallery intends to put out a book.)

In a statement, Molzan writes that the paintings are made “entirely of invented forms,” “leaving behind literal visual interpretations,” and in the strictest sense, this is true, but only in the strictest sense. Her paintings are abstract, but they’re also suggestive of everything, from ice-cream cones to to chairs to topographical maps to trash heaps. The odd style and bright colors seem deliberately awkward and, occasionally, like they’re flirting with the idea of poor pictorial taste (psychedelia and kitschy stained-glass, for instance) and skewed perspectives.

Here are two of the pieces at 4Culture: first Robber Barons, then The Stork Club.