Art is big enough to embrace any school, style or tradition and any taste (or lack thereof). But when it comes to terms and definitions, the chase becomes infinitely elusive.For instance, realism. On the face of it, simple enough: something that looks like what it is. But how one expresses realism is something else again.On one hand is the viewer who says, "Why, those geraniums look so real. You'd never know they were painted, would you?" On the other stand painters such as those now showing at van de Griff Gallery, those who say, "What does realism tell us about art, and about ourselves?Van de Griff's sixth annual realism invitational show presents works by more than 30 artists including photorealism pioneers Don Eddy and Gottfried Helnwein as well as Alessandro Papetti, Janine Stern, Richard Thomas Davis, Deborah Deichler, Dan Griggs, Tony Ryder and Woody Gwyn.For Gwyn, the allure of realism has been both provocative and rewarding."I'm still doing my landscapes and things," Gwyn said in a recent interview. "But it's been an exciting thing to get into (realism) because working from old photographs and postcards and art reproductions has given me a chance to paint things I normally wouldn't be painting."This morning, I was working on a dragon that's in a painting by Giovanni Bellini. I wouldn't normally be painting dragons. Yes, big mouth, horns, scales, everything."The whole painting is an homage to Bellini; there are fragments of his paintings scattered all over the paint surface. Hopefully I'm giving some new life to old imagery (and) it's being seen in a new and different context."As befits an inquisitive and alert artist, Gwyn has matched his media to the message he's trying to convey. His realist works are painted in the old medium of egg tempera, which itself drew his attention for the material's suitability to the subject."It has this beautiful dry, dusty quality to the finish, which suits the subject matter to a T," he said. "It certainly expresses the quality of the objects old postcards, old photographs, old pages from books."I'm interested in the idea of what I'm doing because it seems like we live in a time when we want our experiences mitigated. As a result, I can paint these subjects with total authenticity from my standpoint."I'm saying, `Look, this is an Indian, this a cowboy, this is a dragon, this is whatever,' but the experience was mitigated for me by someone else. And that mitigated experience seems to be something we're very conditioned to accept."Gwyn's Cowboy Race is indeed a mixture of style, history and attitudes tempered and made manifest by technique. The piece looks as though one put three canvases on a white floor then photographed them.Two Native American chiefs in ceremonial garb look sternly out their own background canvases. In the foreground is a large canvas showing a pack of cowboys charging across a sere landscape toward the viewer. With the great expanse of white "canvas" (actually paint) around the three images, the piece is somehow both charming and unsettling.But does being a realist painter mean slavish copying? If he felt it necessary, would Gwyn hesitate to alter the wing of Bellini's dragon? Wouldn't Gwyn use the artist's eye, and artistic license, to add his own contribution?"Naturally there are adjustments I make in the natural objects (I see) to translate them into paint and also translate them into what I'm trying to say," he said."I had a friend over awhile back and I said, `I want you to see my latest still-lifes.' She walked into the studio and looked around and said, `Where are they?' She thought I'd pasted up some pictures."That's part of what I'm after. But it's just not the trompe l'oeil I'm after. I'm after other aspects of art history."Even though it's total realism I'm doing, I feel it's as fresh and as new as today. I really do go out into the world, keeping my eye out for images that have an emotive power. When I find them, I use them just like I use paint that I squeeze out of one of my tubes."I squeeze out some cadmium red to express a certain emotion in the painting. And I use a particular image I've found to express an emotion, almost as a composer would use a note."I'm just having a ball. It's a lot of fun."

Realism group showOpening reception5-7 p.m. today, July 2van de Griff Gallery668 Canyon RoadThrough July