Tacoma artist Penni Russell is a multi-talented individual. She makes glass jewelry, works of kiln-formed glass, mixed media digital collages and abstract expressionist paintings. It is the latter of these talents - painting - that is on view at Gallery Madera in a show called “e.motion.” Russell has made up a clever dictionary-style definition for her title: “e.motion: Expressionism in motion, usually on canvas textured by life.”

The show is comprised of more than a dozen paintings in acrylic on canvas: abstract compositions of color and texture in which Russell seeks to capture an emotional state or the feeling attached to some experience of the natural or social worlds.

Each canvas is covered with a tastefully limited set of colors that merge and blend together in some areas while remaining stark and separate in other quadrants of the picture plane. Often these meditative surfaces are activated by busy drippings of paint in a manner akin to that of the great Jackson Pollock. Generally less busy than Pollock, Russell nevertheless makes the “action painting” technique a useful part of her stylistic arsenal - working the splatters and squiggles of liquid pigment for all their expressiveness.

In a piece such as “Breezin’,” for example, a background of beautiful aqua tones is overlaid with busy drips and streaks of black, white, gray and muted blue-green. The piece gives off a free and easy aquatic feel - a sensation like a moment on the seashore with a cool sea mist brushing against one’s face.

In “Antisocial,” by contrast, the mottled gray backdrop is covered by a dense and very busy layer of black and gray drips along with a few muted red dribs and drabs that wonderfully accent the onslaught. This colorful activity builds up a visual barrage suggestive of the fragile and frazzled state of mind of a person unprepared for the companionship of other humans.

“Fire Within” is a more meditative composition - a Rothko-like (though Russell is less symmetrical than the typical Rothko) blending of black and rich red. Hints of pink and purple peek through here and there. This is a smoldering, glowering and brooding thing with interesting wrinkles in its volcanic epidermis.

Russell’s paintings are things that one can sit and stare at while they work their moody magic on the eye. They are pigmented vessels that bear the feelings and emotional states that Russell seeks to convey.

It is good to discover that the now venerable art of abstract expressionism is alive and well in Tacoma and Gallery Madera is to be commended for acting as a venue for Russell’s enterprise.

“e.motion” runs through Oct. 24 at Gallery Madera, which is located at 2210 Court ‘A.’ For further information visit www.maderawoodworking.com or call (253) 572-1218. A sampling of Russell’s work may be viewed on her website at www.gallery96tacoma.com.