Oil paintings by Nancy Morgan-Barnes; pastels and oil paintings by Gisele McLear, through Sept. 20 at Phoenix Loft Gallery, 157 High St., Belfast, 338-0887.

Nancy Morgan-Barnes captures life on the brink – of disaster, of tragedy, of falling down.

The tension in her paintings lures you in. She lets you interpret the events, but she leaves a crumb-trail of symbols so you can navigate through her paintings. Peacock feathers, flowers, angel-shaped lamps and flyaway balloons form a visual thread that weaves together seemingly unrelated vignettes.

The same blanket shows up in “Wedding Day Disaster” and “Departure.” Are the events related? It’s up to you to figure that out. Either way, there’s an undercurrent of loss and tragedy that transcends the visual. In “Wedding Day Disaster” a half-dressed woman (presumably the bride) huddles in a corner, covering her breasts, as mayhem erupts around her. A sewing kit looks like it exploded on the ironing board. A crushed red rose sits on a toppling chair, its petals falling like drops of blood to the floor. In “Departure,” an androgynous figure huddles in a chair, wrapped in a blanket, as a naked man stands in the doorway to the bathroom in the background. A peacock walks behind the chair and dead flowers and a feather tumble out of a vase.

While Morgan-Barnes has been called a narrative realist, her “incident” paintings, which revolve around unsettling events, have a surreal quality. They evoke the works of Salvador Dali or Rene Magritte in content rather than style.

Her recent focus has been the landscape of Searsport and Belfast, yet even in these paintings there is a sense of suspended motion, of things just about to happen. There are no people in her Mack Point paintings, but the gritty, industrious place takes on a life of its own. You can feel the urgency in an empty railroad track or a puff of steam.

On the other side of the gallery, Gisele McLear’s portraits and still lifes are a tranquil contrast. She manipulates color expertly, from the reflection in “Holly’s Copper Pitcher” to the bright, chunky jar of “Electric Salsa.”

However, the real treat here is McLear’s portraits, which seem to glow from within. Her “Italian Peasant Woman” radiates warmth as her blue-gray eyes stare at something in the distance. The elderly “Miss Ella” sits down for tea, her lips curved in a half-smile and her eyes full of mischief.

Perhaps the sweetest portrait, however, is a young girl sleeping in “Quiet Time.” She looks angelic, wrapped in a softly shaded rainbow blanket, dreamingly oblivious to the world (and artist) around her.

Photographs by Neal Parent; pastels, watercolors and graphite drawings by Joanne Parent, ongoing at The Parent Gallery, 92 Main St., Belfast, 338-1553.

Through Neal Parent’s lens, the sea becomes human. He captures its personality as it churns, impatient and angry, hungry enough to swallow a trawler and its crew. He shows its soft side, reflective and nostalgic. Both sides come together in rich black and white at his new gallery in Belfast.

Parent, a former photographer for the Camden Herald, has a gift for contrast and context. The striking “Windshaped” could be a curve of Asian calligraphy. But if you look closer, you’ll see it’s actually several reeds, reaching up from and reflected in a mirror-still pond.

In “Alright, Simon Says,” a family of turtles wobbles up a branch like a reptilian version of “Make Way for Ducklings.”

His photographs of life at sea are the most arresting of the group, however. In “Fishing the Banks,” the inky ocean roils around a fishing vessel off Georges Banks, as three fishermen scramble to secure their nets. In “Riding out the Storm,” taken later, the deck is clear as the water rages around the ship.

Parent’s daughter Joanne gives her own interpretation of his seascapes, cutting back on details and injecting the images with color.

She shares her father’s gift for the visual, but she takes a different approach. Joanne shows simple seascapes and flowery hillsides in a group of vibrant pastels, both large and tiny. She rounds out the mix with a selection of painstakingly detailed graphite drawings of lighthouses and boats.

Regardless of the medium, father and daughter share a love for the ocean that permeates their work.