Lisa Sweet re-invisions and reinterprets medieval and early modern Christian iconography in a style borrowed from Jan Van Eyck and the Netherlandish artists, but makes it uniquely her own.

There are certain artists whose works are instantly recognizable, starting with Van Eyck and leading up through Picasso and Pollock. Add Sweet to that roster.

Most of Sweet's paintings are portraits of single figures - sometimes full figures but more typically from waist up, and often with one or more hands visually extending out from the bottom of the picture frame with the kind of 3-D effect made famous by Carravagio.

Wow! I'm doing a lot of name dropping.

I've reviewed small groups of Sweet's paintings before, but her show at University of Puget Sound Kittredge Gallery is the largest exhibition of her work I've seen - although it's still modestly small and relegated to the back gallery while the main gallery is devoted to works from their print collection, meaning Kittredge placed the cart before the horse.

The show is called Lisa Sweet, Devotion and Demonstration. In a wall statement Sweet explains it is a show about Mythos and Logos. In spiritual terms Mythos teaches through symbol and myth, appealing to the emotions, while Logos teaches through logic. Sweet turns these upside-down and inside-out, combining Mythos and Logos in startling, provocative and often bitingly humorous ways - the most typical of these "humorous ways" being to literally interpret what is meant as symbol or metaphor.

Example: Man of Sorrows is a portrait of Jesus with stigmata. (There's also a modern-day laundress with stigmata in this show, but back to Jesus ...). Attached to his body with pins, as if stuck to a cork board, are symbols of sorrow and pain, all painted in a metallic gray color making them look like little lead icons. There is a Christian fish symbol, a scale (justice), a dagger, a key, a cross and many others.

Often the meaning of her pictures is hinted at if not literally stated by words scratched into the subject's forehead or by symbolic images tied to their bodies. For example, in Quarry, a copper engraving, a thin and sorrowful woman is ascending to heaven while being held to the earth by the weight of quarry stones tied to her body.

No brush marks can be seen in Sweet's paintings. The contours of her figures are smoothly flowing and sensuous. Her shading is meticulous. And there is nearly always something disturbing about the eyes - they're often swollen or bruised, with one or more half shut.

Her settings are timeless, with figures in nature or set in interior scenes that look equally like modern-day settings or the interiors of Van Eyck paintings - complete with his ubiquitous black-and-white checkerboard floors.

One of the more interesting aspects of her paintings is her use of contours. Most of her portraits are outlined with smooth contour lines, but in some of them the contours vanish into the background, a thoroughly modern touch.

I highly recommend this show. There will be a gallery talk Friday, April 2 from 2-4 p.m.

[Kittredge Gallery, Lisa Sweet, Devotion and Demonstration, through April 10, Monday-Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday noon to 5 p.m.,1500 N. Warner St., Tacoma, 253.879.3701]