Mary Ellen Bossert’s “Intimate Relationships Made Public #2” is being shown at Art Dialogue Gallery through February 17.

This Saturday (February 4) at noon, The Western New York Artists Group opens its annual Valentine’s season exhibition, “Romantically Inspired,” at Art Dialogue Gallery (One Linwood Ave.). For the exhibit, regional artists have brought together friendly and intimate works of art that might be a pleasing gift for your Valentine this season.

Donald Scheller’s finely crafted black and white prints have three takes on the notion of the romantic image. “I Think It’s About Love” shows a couple in a quiet, close moment looking at a Rauschenberg painting at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. “It’s a start” puts two eggs together in a heart-shaped cake tin. The third photograph layers a woman’s silhouette in a formally tight composition.

Mary Ellen Bossert’s mother/child portrait from her “Intimate Relationships made Public #2” (pictured) is not only touching but terrifically executed. Bossert takes a closely cropped image of the two embracing, the mother kissing her child’s cheek, and blows it up to larger than life (the painting is larger than three square feet). The artist successfully limits her colors to burnt sienna, white and black. Yet nothing is lost; the mother’s brow curves back into space, and the child’s forehead seems to rest on the picture plane, in this sweet painting.

Priscilla Bowen contributes four drawings to the exhibit. Two are delicate, sensuous drawings of plant roots reaching into the ground, made in charcoal and conte crayon. This is an artist who time and time again proves the power of a small, well-crafted drawing. Another drawing, Joanna Ranson’s “The Gift” presents a pile of Hershey’s Kisses in cupped, strong, aged hands.

One of few sculptural works in this exhibit, Larry Kinney’s “Three Come as One,” is a lovely portrait of a forest made in wood and copper. Kinney carves the wood to create individual trees with graceful but imperfect trunks. The copper is suitably reflective atop and amidst the gathering, providing the different tones that the chameleon metal can afford.

With a good sense of humor and quirkiness, Alison E. Kurek’s small sculptures in frames provide the female form as muse. Two works are mermaids, and the third is summed up by its title, “Pheromone Phanny—Goddess of the Hot Date.” These women swing their hips and bat their eyelashes; they are shapely, gaudy and the life of the party. They dress inappropriately—when clothed—and sing off key, loudly and with gusto, but you’ve gotta love ’em, and you want to take them home with you.

Other best in show considerations go to wall sculptures by Dianne Baker, photographs by Donald Siuta, a photo of Niagara Falls by Langley Kinzie, and an oil painting by Julie McIndoo. The exhibition remains on view through February 17.