Chukwudinma Nsofor, “Celebration (Citizens of Nowhere)” (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

Chukwudinma Nsofor's pictures often appear to be teeming with people, maybe crowded into markets or pressed together in ecstatic dances. Admittedly, this impression of the work in the painter's self-titled Amy Kaslow Gallery show could be entirely wrong. The Nigeria-raised D.C.-area artist employs a style that's mostly gestural, rendering figures with a looseness that recalls Willem de Kooning, the most abstract-expressionist of representational painters.

Chukwudinma Nsofor "Brother Cletus" (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

Chukwudinma Nsofor "Man with a Cap " (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

Chukwudinma Nsofor, "Nnenna/Nnanga" (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

The show does include a set of sketches of single faces made with just a few strokes, and a large pencil and charcoal drawing of a group of "Sistas." These starker pictures are less colorful, but often include a splash or pink or slash of red. Nsofor's subjects, often subtitled "Citizens of Nowhere," are clearly human. But they're more action than weight, more pigment than flesh.

Chukwudinma Nsofor, "Sistas" (Amy Kaslow Gallery) 

Chukwudinma Nsofor: Chukwudinma!

Through April 13 at Amy Kaslow Gallery, 7920 Norfolk Ave., Bethesda. amykaslowgallery.com.

Jane Kell, “Shallows” (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

THERE'S NOTHING URBAN ABOUT THE PAINTINGS IN JANE KELL'S "Skyline," which depict rustic vistas whose heavens are just as likely to be red as blue. The British oil painter -- a former artist in residence at Amy Kaslow Gallery, which hosts her current show -- has a liquid, luminous style that evokes both clouds and sunlight. Kell begins with diluted pigments, which she then overlays with thicker paint. Regions of thinner color sometimes survive, providing radiant highlights.

Jane Kell, "Harbour" (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

Jane Kell, "River in Winter IV" (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

Most of these 12 canvases depict eventful skies above land masses rendered simply as jagged black horizontals. At the bottom of a few pictures are expanses of water, whose blues either mirror or contrast the colors above. In "Harbour," a bit of reflected red-orange sky splashes into medium-blue water. The grayish sky of "River in Winter IV" has a faintly golden glow, but the brightest hue is the orange foliage that lines the ice-blue waterway.

Jane Kell, "Skyline V" (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

The most abstract pictures forgo horizon lines and earthbound details to lead the eye directly into rich hues and active brushwork. Two of these paintings are mostly loose stacks of sumptuous blues, with rough swathes of gray or white to hint at clouds or sunlight. The predominantly green "Shallows" employs a similar strategy, but in this case the enveloping hue could be a pond, perhaps punctuated by lily pads or other aquatic vegetation. Again, the fluidity of these paintings suits their subjects, whether airy or liquid. Kell's work is a plunge into color.

Jane Kell, "Blue Landscape I" and "Blue Landscape II" (Amy Kaslow Gallery)

Jane Kell: Skyline

Through Feb. 16 at Amy Kaslow Gallery, 7920 Norfolk Ave., Bethesda. amykaslowgallery.com

Joseph Holston, Grand Finale, 2013. Oil on canvas, 42 x 50 in

OVER HIS LONG CAREER, JOSEPH HOLSTON HAS WORKED in many styles and media. But he's returned often to jazz musicians, the theme of "Call and Response," his AU Museum show. Most often, he shows them at work, and at play, merging with the sounds they make. In these prints and paintings, the riffs are represented by curved-edge blocks of Cubist-style color, often pitting blues and purples against reds and oranges. The heads are usually black circles, suggesting notes from a musical score come to life atop a swinging body.

Joseph Holston, Jazz at Takoma Station, 1990. Etching. 12 x 14.75 in.

Holston was born 80 years ago in a rural, racially segregated area of what is now an upscale Maryland suburb. His images are archetypal, yet rooted in local experience. Among his most recent works is a painting titled "Jazz at Takoma Station," named for a club in northwest D.C.

The show includes a few more realistic works, although even they have fanciful elements. A 1990 screenprint, "Jazz," is dominated by a crossways golden saxophone, and the man who holds it is surrounded by clippings about the Black experience. The musician emerges from his culture, yet remains embedded in it.

Joseph Holston, Jazz, 1990. Screenprint, 35.5 x 25 in.

THE VIEW OF HOLSTON'S CAREER WIDENS SUBSTANTIALLY in Amy Kaslow Gallery's survey, "Black Lives, A Retrospective." It includes many additional prints of stylized jazz musicians, but also work that's either more abstracted or more realistic than the musical numbers at the AU Museum. Skill, not a specific style, is the unifying factor.

Joseph Holston, Miz Emily, 1982. Oil on canvas, 56 x 33 in.

Joseph Holston, Black Boy, 1972. Oil on canvas, 40 x 32 in.

Although most of the pictures are expressionist and often based on geometric forms, there are two photo-derived paintings that depict African Americans in impoverished circumstances, yet illuminated by golden light. "Miz Emily" has a near-Biblical feel, while "Black Boy" poignantly calls attention to its subject's mismatched shoes.

Joseph Holston, Two Nudes 1989/2003. Hand-colored etching, 22.50 x 19.25 in.

All the prints and paintings are representational, but Holston's modes range widely. His Cubist-influenced still lifes are aggressively one-dimensional yet fractured into multiple planes that represent theoretical depth. There's a hint of Futurism in "Two Nudes," whose overlapping bodies suggest the same person at different moments. The orange field of "African Mask," a boldly colored etching, seems to embody the life, or lives, behind the flat surface. As in his jazz pictures, Holston uses color and shape to potently suggest sound and motion.

Joseph Holston, African Mask, 2010. Etching, 23.75 x 28 in.

Joseph Holston: Call and Response

Through Dec. 8 at the American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW.

american.edu/cas/museum

Joseph Holston: Black Lives, A Retrospective

Through Feb. 16 at Amy Kaslow Gallery, 7920 Norfolk Ave., Bethesda. amykaslowgallery.com.