Gallery gossip

• It seems every restaurant in town is hanging local artists’ work. This is good for business, good for artists, and good for the public. And here’s a branch of that trend that could prove fruitful: Too many visits to medical facilities are made worse by seeing the same old mechanically reproduced prints of scenes of downtown Asheville done in tasteful mauve. Counteracting this malaise, Cindy Walton’s super-dramatic abstracts are currently on view at the Breast Center at Ridgefield Court (through June 2).

“Green Man Advancing,” Larry Turner, acrylic and mixed-media on paper.

• After a long sabbatical (his last exhibit, he says, was in 1991), Larry Turner is painting again. Like his expressive renderings of liver-and-white English Pointers in the field and horses with their parts diagrammed, the new works retain Turner’s energetic brush work. “Green Man Advancing” is loosely based on a symbol found in a European crosswalk sign and a painting of Francis Bacon (based, in turn, on a painting of Van Gogh’s called “Artist on His Way to Work”). Recent Paintings by Larry Turner will run through May at Bo Bo Gallery.

• UNCA art students will miss Professor Ginger Spivey’s tremendous energy and enthusiasm — she’s moving to Virginia.

• Local artist Gwyn Dean has a great summer planned. She’ll spend a week doing research in New York City, then is off to Italy, where she’ll concentrate on making wood-cut illustrations for a recently translated manuscript from the 1500s. The book is about a widowed Hungarian queen who, with her handmaiden, manages to steal the royal crown so her unborn son can succeed his father as King.