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Laura Burke’s still lifes have never quite sat still. Curtains blow in the wind. Birds and bugs fly. Hairline plumes of smoke curl from candles. And flowers—most animated—swoon, prance, weep, and wilt. They tease and tickle and grieve and console the fruit and pottery that make up the Portland artist’s surreal scenes. So Be It, the title of Burke’s latest show at Chefas Projects (opening 5–8pm Friday, April 10; thru May 9), implies a resigned acceptance. But I struggle not to read it as an animating call, a spell. So be it! the artist seems to wave her wand, and all her collected totems come to life.

Precious stones are the latest magical talisman to fill Burke’s pictures. She cites George Frederick Kunz’s book The Curious Lore of Precious Stones for her interest in bringing rocks to life. And they do fit her criteria nicely. In what lifeless object has the entire world placed more power and meaning than sparkly gems?

Burke’s paintings and works on paper borrow liberally and explicitly from art history. She has named a past work for Pierre Bonnard, and she cites his need to have a deep relationship with the objects he painted as inspiration in this show’s notes. A splotchy vignette in the pastel drawing Rite of Spring lands like a love letter to Mary Fedden, the British painter known for her own flattened still lifes, who’s also named in the notes. Indulging in these felt, color-rich abstractions is what pulls Burke’s work out of the cold and austere realms you expect when that murky word surrealism comes up. Their frequent preoccupations with death, on the other hand, ground the pictures firmly in the uncanny mode.

Rite of Spring no doubt references Stravinsky’s famous ballet in which a young girl is sacrificed, dancing herself to death. The show is also dedicated to Burke’s father, who died earlier this year, and the tone of mourning lingers particularly over two portraits. A new direction for Burke, these human studies flip her animating conceit. While plants, insects, gemstones, and pottery practically wriggle with emotion, people are almost entirely inert. In Untitled, a woman wrapped in a black dress contorts her face and cranes her neck dramatically to one side. A black calla lily rests on her opposite shoulder, her posture strained to accommodate grief. Her empty gaze is not quite fixed on an orange moth—the only bright spot of color in the painting, the only living, moving object surrounded by otherwise stilled life.

More things to do this week

Elsewhere...

• “Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, ballet isn’t dead yet.” Martha Ullman West on Oregon Ballet Theatre’s latest, including a take on Princess and the Pea.  (Oregon ArtsWatch) 
• The theater festival Fertile Ground is bigger than ever, premiering nearly 100 works across 17 days to celebrate its 17th year. (Willamette Week)