It may be difficult to write about Mark Bennion's frescoes at Traver Gallery, but they're not difficult at all to enjoy. That is if you're willing to give them the long and concentrated attention they deserve.

They're hard to write about because they're so minimal and there's so little variety. The frescoes are all very subtle variations on a simple theme: a flat surface in monotone divided into sections that look like flat stones or concrete blocks with scratched and drawn marks and, in many of them, smaller blocks or rectangles of a contrasting color. They look like sections of plaster or stone walls from an archeological find from a buried city like Pompeii-whose walls were decorated with fresco, Bennion's media of choice and a media rarely used by modern artists. The combination of modern abstraction and media seldom used since the Renaissance lends to Bennion's paintings a timeless quality.

To read Alec Clayton's full review of this show, click here.

[William Traver Gallery, Wednesday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday noon to 5 p.m., through Sept. 11, 1821 E. Dock St., Tacoma, 253.383.3685]