When you view the annual spring show of the Denton-based Visual Arts Society of Texas, you get the feeling that we’re living in sobering times. Gazes are steady or hard among the figures captured, and the abstract work presents a field of angles, slopes and shades that speak to mystery.

The show’s introspective and downbeat tone could very well be the work of the man who selected it. Nic Nicosia, a graduate from the University of North Texas Department of Radio, Television and Film, is known for his edgy photographs. One critic said Nicosia “gauges the depth of suburban experience with a cold eye and a warm heart.”

Nicosia’s juror’s statement left plenty to the imagination — he wrote only about how hard it was to work with the space constraints of the Meadows Gallery.

The top award winners of the exhibit are mostly serious. Steve Miller’s Image Bearer, the Best of Show winner, is sort of neutral. A black cowboy levels a gaze at the viewer, the start of lines around his eyes, flecks of silver in his mustache. The scene behind him, with longhorn cattle grazing beneath a blue sky, gives a pastoral context to the portrait that is rife with narrative.

Miller, a Grand Prairie painter, uses his oils to create a drama and realism that is arresting. After the Dean Mitchell solo exhibit earlier this year in the East Gallery, Miller’s winning work asks us to look at a figure in a new way, a way that stirs thought about histories either forgotten or concealed.

There are other somber faces among Nicosia’s award winners. In another oil painting, this time Kansas-based Ming Zhou’s Fire, man appears lost in thought, the orange-red light of a fire on his face.

Whether he looks down on a ravaged valley or tends a warm campfire isn’t known. You might read disbelief or weariness in his eyes — or maybe just automatic attention. As for the time, there’s no hint. It could be a historical work or a contemporary depiction of a man looking calmly into the flames. Zhou’s painting won the $100 Barbara Evans, Attor­ney at Law Cash Award and the $100 Ampersand Award.

The exhibit’s award-winning three-dimensional work is mostly as serious as the paintings. Sure, there’s a humorous note in Rockwall sculptor Karen Jacobi’s deer. It’s a small work made of found objects — small metal bits and pieces. One horn is a screw and the other a squiggly wire or spring.

But California sculptor Doug Blechner’s untitled work, from his Living Stone Series 1, seems anatomical and formidable. The stoneware form suggests the shape, texture and mass of a human brain — the greenish cast helps that along.

Blechner uses an organic suggestion to merge beauty — the gentle slopes and ridges recall green hills — with the familiar and clinical. The mounting material, painted an intense but institutional blue, makes the piece seem even more like something you might find in a laboratory, suspended in a jar. The piece earned the $100 Lynne and Kevin Cox Cash Award and the $100 Golden Artist Colors Inc. Award. 

There was a healthy showing of local artists in the show. Award-winners from Denton include Rachel Fischer, Millie Johnson, Tim Harding and John Cala­brese. Rhonda Unnerstall of Oak Point earned an award in the national exhibit, too. More Den­ton artists got into the show: Andrew Decaen, Leah Gose, Jeanne Hartsill, Brent Hirak and Sarah Williams.

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com .

What: Visual Arts Society of Texas’ 40th annual national exhibition

When: The exhibit runs through May 29. Gallery hours are 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays.

Where: Meadows Gallery at the Center for the Visual Arts, 400 E. Hickory St.