Suzanne Muchnic writes about painter Helen Lundeberg. Helen Lundeberg: A Retrospective is on view at the Laguna Art Museum through May 30, 2016.

Muchnic observes: "From the beginning to the end of her career, Lundeberg drew most of her subject matter from memory and imagination, rarely painting directly from models, studio set-ups, or nature. Yet all of her works—even the most abstract—refer to reality, or alternate realities. A spare, hard-edge composition that appears to be non-objective at first glance soon reveals itself as an interior/exterior conundrum. The spaces created by Lundeberg can shift from domestic containment to heavenly freedom, from empty rooms to borderless land or sea. A reclining nude can double as a ridge of rolling hills. A still-life or portrait can materialize as a picture within a picture, within another picture. As the artist sometimes said, she did not paint what she saw, she painted what she wanted to see."