"Paradiso" Danny Rolph offers us a hint of the future to come, in nine major paintings, acrylic on canvas, completed this year or last. It is a utopian future, airy, bright, with open spaces, colorful, filled with vibrant energy. The exhibition might have been called "Dragster," as there are three paintings that reveal Rolph's fondness for high velocity. Dragster 5 may be the most powerful in the exhibition, dazzling with vivid colors. Luscious red lips reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe's entice at bottom left, suggesting sensuality or perhaps the reward for a victory; it is a delicious ferment. Dragster 2 is complex (they all are), and most directly suggestive of roads, leading to a vortex. In Dragster 4, two teal-colored flat planes are centrally located and dominate, giving the impression of floating in space. Paradiso 3 has a festival feeling, a holiday party with decorations strung on a line, lighthearted and gay. Paradiso 7 consists of two panels providing one image, an accelerating arrow leading left. We sense that something important lies ahead, but know not what it is; it's an enigma. Enterprise 18 has the most formed of Rolph's utopian visions, as though the whirligig had slowed and jelled into a civilization. Central here is a distinct image of a multicolored pyramid, and there are clear blue skies. The painting is cheerful and inviting, but is the pyramid a reminder that even Utopia will have its day and then be gone? Version consists of multiple panels, horizontal but for one image, the future to come, as yet unformed, challenging. Enterprise 15 is from a formed world, with an overhead fan, perhaps an office chair, and a large blue image, perhaps a ship carrying cargo and, yes, an American flag. Through November 15. Barbara Davis Gallery, 4411 Montrose, 713-520-9200, barbaradavisgallery.com. — JJT

"Scribble Morphings" The scribbles over these acrylic-on-canvas paintings document that H.J. Bott has a sense of humor and refuses to take himself too solemnly, though this in no way undermines his seriousness as an artist. There were several paintings that I thought stood alone as completed works and the scribbles detracted, and at least one where the scribble seemed necessary for completeness. Matching Your Drapes employs blue and brown colors in a directly cubistic design, and the scribble seemed to me to interrupt a most successful arrangement. Mobius Quatro, on the other hand, would look unfinished without the scribble. In Free Zones, the scribble is essential to create the impression of a stained-glass window. And in NARRATIVE: Generals, Decorated, the scribble serves a wonderful though deliberately ambiguous purpose — it may be either an endorsement of the military battle ribbons or a cancellation of them, all against a background showing the earth as viewed from space. The largest and most complex painting is a double panel, tilted at an angle, with checkerboards and yin and yang images. There is a sense of planning and of architecture, and the scribble here is probably essential to getting us past the large center of subdued colors. In OH-GEE, the scribble is dominated by an in-your-face black background and large greenish shapes, each resembling a comma. These paintings are all recent, but the gallery has included one large one, 66" by 50", done in 2000, Landscape Rhetoric, which is stunning in its warmth, grace and subtlety. There appears to be a transparent fabric curtain, shielding but not impeding the view of what lies within, unknown but holy. Through November 15. Anya Tish Gallery, 4411 Montrose, 713-524-2299, anyatishgallery.com. — JJT

"Texas Before the Boom, 1850-1900: Selections from the Bobbie and John L. Nau Collection," on view at the Pearl Fincher Art Museum in Spring, consists of 40 or so paintings and drawings made in Texas or by Texans, mostly before 1900. Since most people, when they think of Texas art — especially the old stuff — probably think first of bluebonnets, cowboys and longhorn cattle, this show might just as aptly be titled Texas Art Before the Clichés. There's not a single bluebonnet or cowboy, and only one longhorn, in the show. The Nau Collection, encompassing all phases of earlier Texas art, is one of the largest and most comprehensive there is. Though only a fraction of the whole, the works included here are some of the earliest and rarest of their kind anywhere. Many of the works in this show speak to the vastness of Texas and to our Mexican heritage, and they're so early (for Texas) and so rare that there will be revelations for even the most seasoned viewer. Thomas Allen's Galveston Beach of 1877 is gorgeous — wedges of sand and water converging in the distance below a rectangle of sky, clouds echoing waves, no people, no buildings, reduced almost to a modernist study of geometry and subtle color. The most intriguing work is The Burning of the Heroes of the Alamo from 1903 by José Arpa y Perea. It's richly painted and complex, befitting Arpa's Spanish training: A painting of the burning Alamo surrounded by greenery sits before a female figure (is she a nun, an allegorical reference or something else?) holding an hourglass, or maybe an urn containing the ashes of the heroes. You'll leave it wanting to know more. Through December 13. 6815 Cypresswood Drive, Spring, 281-376-6322, pearlmfa.org. — RT