More than a dozen sumptuous oil paintings make up “Catalyst,” the sixth solo exhibition of seventh-generation Texan Terrell James at the redoubtable Barry Whistler Gallery. While they can be easily appreciated on a fully abstract level, several of the titles, along with the predominance of blues and greens in the color palette, offer clues that the works are grounded in views of land and sea.

Within those parameters, the works employ a broad range of tones, from intense primary reds and greens to an almost completely grayed-out “atmospheric fog effect” that could be somewhere in the North Atlantic. In between are delicious notes of salmon and gold that evoke a relaxing summer afternoon.

Particularly engaging are the contour lines that mostly, but not entirely, demarcate the boundaries of the color fields, yielding a certain spatial ambiguity. Some of the curves traced out by these lines might even suggest the presence of organic forms, in the teasing, semi-abstract fashion sometimes used by Arshile Gorky and Susan Rothenberg.