United in Art,” an exhibition of fine art from England , Wales , Scotland , and Ireland , presents a varied sampling of emerging and established tendencies from the United Kingdom and its territories at Agora Gallery, 530 West 25th Street , in Chelsea , from June 1 through 21. (Reception: Thursday, June 7, from 6 to 8 PM.)
 Like Bill Jensen and Gregory Amenoff, Patrick Walshe imparts a visionary quality to landscape. However, Walshe delineates the lay of the land more faithfully than his American counterparts, even while imbuing his views of the Irish countryside with a misty metaphysical dimension. In paintings such as “Scenes from the City Glendasan” and “Scenes from the City The Lake,” Walshe approaches Turner for his near mystical evocation of majestic landscapes through vigorous painterly means.
  London painter Maureen Oliver explores complex spiritual themes in a deceptively primitivistic style. In “Tree of Life,” an embryonic human form appears, as though seen through a circular window, at the center of a large tree, while the faces of a man and woman are cradled by its upper branches. In another intriguing painting by Oliver Vincent van Gogh sits at his easel like a solitary art saint, a bandage wrapped around his severed ear, painting “The Starry Night” while mocking phantom faces appear in the window.
 Currently residing in Scotland , Baron Charlie Lush evokes a mood akin to Edvard Munch in “Women on the Path,” with its small figures dwarfed by sinuous trees, while another painting entitled “Women on the Boat” creates a contrastingly festive feeling with fashionably dressed figures on the deck of an elegant cruise ship. Like Alex Katz, Lush is one of the few contemporary painters who can make serious art from stylish subjects.
  Another artist from Scotland , Lee Robertson paints realist oils that resemble film stills with sensuous painterly surfaces. In  ”Only Nature is Divine,” a moody young leading-man type appears to gaze up at the viewer from within an environment of scattered autumn leaves. In “Nowhere, Somewhere,” a face framed by what appears to be an abruptly cropped car window creates dramatic tension. While suggesting a narrative, Robertson leaves it to viewers “to make up their own mind what is going on.”  
 Although an autodidact, Mohammed Yasin Saddique has evolved a highly sophisticated semi-abstract style in which skillfully simplified cityscapes combine colors suggestive of stained glass with formal rhythms akin to the gemlike compositions of Paul Klee. However, Saddique conveys a more humanistic side of his artistic vision in a series of figurative works, inspired by a sojourn to Pakistan , in which he seeks to reveal “the story of anguish and hurt hidden behind a face.”
 The English artist  Maggie C, whose paintings are inspired by subterranean volcanoes, states, “I'm trying to connect with nature and capture the energy that exists beneath our feet.” In the powerful triptych “Lava Rush,” with its thickly encrusted textures and vibrant red hues evoking an explosion, Maggie C interprets a violent facet of nature in strikingly abstract terms.
 In sculptural installations with titles such as “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” and “Allegory of Abundance,” Andrew Cooper deals with the contrasts and ironies of a scientific age. As designer of major architectural works for corporate and public spaces, Cooper has learned to stop the passing attention span in its tracks and capture the mass imagination through his manipulation of glass and other ethereal materials that lend his work a poetic quality rarely encountered in art so conceptually rigorous.
 Also including work by Su Goddard and John Porro, two artists reviewed at length elsewhere in this issue, “United in Art” will interest not only anglophiles but everyone concerned with international trends in contemporary art.