Wilshire Center

New Yorker Philemona Williamson uses a exotic palette to paint enchanting scenes that look like childhood or subconscious impressions filtered through her sensual sagacity. Populated with cartoon-y folk art figures that are more robust and tensile than those of Robert Colescott, her canvases depict a young black girl awkwardly maneuvering one high heel and one bare foot, crawling over furniture amidst curious toy puppets, always eyeing the antics of grown-ups who often hide behind bizarre masks.

Works are painted in strident swaths of bold poppy yellows, Kelly greens and lilacs partnered to optimize color’s psychological reverberations. Williamson tilts diagonals and sets action in tight, pressure cooker spaces so her images have the vertiginous magic of Caribbean carnivals. Mysterious foliage and odd objects popping up out of context blend indoors and out, past and present, fantasy and graceful dignity.

In “Shore Road, Magnolia Mass,” a nearly grown girl in pleated skirt and loafers tumbles to the edge of a bright yellow and magenta precipice just as her father, the chauffeur for a white family, stops the car to offer a powerful helping hand. Confident, almost cagey, the pigtailed woman-child decides to go it on her own. (Wenger Gallery, 828 N. La Brea Ave., to July 2.)