Welsh's paintings headline "Between Rock and an Art Place," a group show at the Zeitgeist Gallery of paintings and sculptures by artists most of us think of as musicians. Besides Welsh, Jonathan Richman, Peter Wolf, Juliana Hatfield, and Robin Lane have work here. The roster of talent playing at last week's opening reception reads like a who's who of Boston rock luminaries.

It sounds like a great party. But can these music makers paint?

Many of them can.

Two things distinguish visual art made by musicians. First, many of them don't know a lot about art. They're not engaged in the interplay of figure and ground, in how to shape space on a canvas, or in how to use color suggestively instead of clobbering you over the head with it. With a few notable exceptions, these are neither delicate nor subtle works of art.

Second, musicians tell stories. They are used to getting up in public and singing or playing their laments, their love songs, their protests. By and large, "Between Rock and an Art Place" follows that vibe. There's outrage here, and color and boldness. Everyone's heart is on his or her sleeve - often in an ironic, slacker sort of way.

Take Welsh. He cites Robert Rauschenberg and Jackson Pollock as his inspirations, and you can see the manic, edgy, masculine tone in his canvases, which verge on abstract expressionism. Welsh handles his brush confidently, and his paintings read as if he sliced open a metaphorical vein and poured blood and soul onto the canvas. Two works titled "Suicide" proffer skull-like heads in reds, blacks, and yellows. One diagrams the skull, with text pointing out "nasal septum" and "anterior nasal spine." Text at the bottom counts down nihilistically: "Suicide 9:39. Suicide 9:40." It's gripping, but it's raw - what an artist puts down when he's exorcising his demons, and before he grows into his talent.

Welsh has shown once before - at the Paradise Lounge, last fall. A handful of artists here, though, are as well known in the art world as in the music world. Adam Sherman's digital prints glow with a refined abstract sensibility. Sherman used to front the band Private Lighting; more recently he cut a jazzy CD titled "Songbird." He also went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and his work is that of a full-fledged visual artist. His "Gold," an acrylic painting over a digital print on silk, features a grid so delicately painted, it looks lit from within in places and opaque in others.

Like Sherman, Mark Dwinell (of the band Bright) brings a sophisticated eye to his abstractions. They fit in here because they're fun and colorful, like a floor covered with confetti - but the layers he creates with the bits of color, making them tinier as they approach the surface, then outlining some with a marker, make the piece more than simply fun.

Jeff and Jane Hudson, who teach at the Museum School and make videos as well as playing in the band Jeff and Jane, have still images here. Jane Hudson's "Stones," showing a lightning bolt shivering in a boulder, comes from a dramatic video piece that ran last month at the New England School of Art and Design. Jeff Hudson's "Post Modern Landscape I" looks as if it, too, is part of a larger video work, but like Jane's it has allure as a photograph. The picture of an old tree wavers, as if it's going to dissolve, as bands of color criss-cross it, unnervingly appropriating nature into an art-historical dialectic.

Cynthia von Buhler, known for her performances and a CD called "Women of Sodom," also makes art and even ran a gallery out of her home in Allston for a time. She's got a pair of darkly comic paintings here: "Mary's Heaven" and "Jesus' Hell." In the former, a multibreasted Madonna spurts milk from three nipples to a trio of thirsty cats as flying saucers prevent a plane from hitting twin towers in the background. The latter shows Christ harangued by three monkeys in priest's vestments; one eats Jesus' brain with a spoon.

This kind of black humor turns up often in "Between Rock and an Art Place." Asa Brebner, who cofounded the bands Mickey Clean and the Mezz and Robin Lane and the Chartbusters and has released four solo CDs, makes wild constructions out of old toys and other junk. "History of the World,

Illustrated From Yard Sales" features a tall blue-painted panel with gold-covered toys affixed to it. Dinosaurs crowd at the bottom, then humans show up guarding a castle, then we see stagecoaches and the snake of a railroad track up the middle. At the top, a plane flies straight for the World Trade Center. It's fun and bleak at once, suggesting that prog ress has some nasty pitfalls.

Lane weighs in with fiber art. She makes baroque-looking pillows with lushly patterned silk covers and heavy tassels. Joey Pesce, a founding member of 'Til Tuesday, is a highly skilled wood sculptor, as well. A lanky Madonna, his "Irene" flows with the grain of the wood, right down to her notably long feet, which make her as fluid as river water.

Juliana Hatfield calls her drawings "intuitive autism." The one here, "Communication Breakdown," is a small ink piece showing an intricate network of lines with floral and butterfly shapes implied. Dana Colley, saxophonist for Twine men and formerly of Morphine, makes woodcuts depicting musicians; the strong lines and exaggerated figures recall 1930s-era art.

There are some disappointments in the show. Punk pioneer Jonathan Richman struggles to get his perspective right. Peter Wolf's "The Second Coming" shows a Neptune-like figure rising from a rush of overly florid brush strokes.

On the whole, though, "Between Rock and an Art Place," offers up brash, opinionated, and well-crafted art. It may lack subtlety, but visitors are likely to walk away from it with something like the buzz you get when the band really rocks.

- printed in The Boston Globe, February 21, 2003