Art is all in the family at three Cayuga County galleries.

Exhibits featuring the work of fathers and daughters and brothers and sisters can currently be found in the Grove and String Room galleries in Aurora and the Cayuga County Chamber of Commerce gallery.

But if the stories of each family of artists are any indication, blood is thinner than paint.

The paintings of Wells College professor of art William Roberts and his daughter, Melissa Roberts Johnson, hang side-by-side in the school's String Room Gallery. From a distance their styles appear similar, but a closer examination reveals literal layers of difference.

Roberts works primarily within the abstract style. Few representational forms are to be found in his art; instead, swirls, lines and splotches cover his canvases.

“It lives or dies by the color, shape and form,” Roberts said of his work.

His daughter found her flavor for abstract art in his studio at the age of 5. Today, she teaches art classes at SyraSyra

Syracuse University and Le Moyne College.

“She's sharing in something I've been at for a long time,” Roberts said.

Her work shares the surface characteristics of Roberts' paintings. Although brighter oranges and yellows are a little more predominant on Roberts Johnson's palette, her compositions also take abstract forms.

“I approach my paintings in an intuitive way, I think of a certain moment or feeling,” she said. “It doesn't matter whether what's driving me comes across to the viewer.”

The contrast between the work of Roberts Johnson and that of her father becomes clear by taking a close look at the paintings. Beneath the similar interplay of color and form on the surface of each painter's canvases, one can see that she works with less layers of paint.

“I do a lot of wiping and thin layers,” she explained.

In select works, the pure white canvas peeks through the light brush strokes with which Roberts Johnson applied the paint. Such technique is nowhere to be found in her father's works.

“Some of my paintings have seven to 10 layers underneath; I keep painting over and remnants of what's underneath shows through,” Roberts said of his technique.

Roberts' style has not been too affected by the less heavy-handed approach his daughter has taken. He feels he has become too entrenched in his own technique to change as an artist. But as a father, Roberts has been inspired by the sight of his work interspersed with his daughter's in a gallery setting for the first time.

“It's enhanced by the fact that we're both so vitally interested in painting and art,” Roberts said. “It makes everything a little more special.”

The family of Stephen Datz of Skaneateles is an even more eclectic bunch, self-described as “an intensely scrutinizing landscape painter, a semiotics-based abstract painter, an ephemerally inspired whimsical painter/muralist and an allegory-influenced found-object sculptor.” All four will find space inside the Grove Gallery in Aurora for the next four weeks.

Datz is the sculptor. For 25 years, he has fashioned his works with an autobiographical inspiration that may not always be apparent to the spectator. He hopes people who see his sculptures “examine their own notion of art and become self-conscious about it.”

Datz's “Siren” series crudely creates the female figure with found objects. Each places a frilly material resembling hair atop a semi-circular object to represent the head, which rests on an axis of some sort that is crossed by two breast-like objects toward its top.

“The scale of them is human, so you have a one-on-one confrontation with them,” Datz said.

The works were informed by his idea of making art in the absence of an audience or “when there may be better things to do,” Datz said.

Rachel Harms, Datz's wife, is a frequent visitor in his studio.

“She comes in, asks, 'What the hell is this?', and a couple days later asks how I got here from there,” Datz joked.

Harms brings to the family's Grove exhibit a taste of abstract art influenced by semiotic theory. Her works loosen the connection between the images they feature and the ideas they suggest.

“I'm not evasive, but the bottom line is that I am making abstract work and a lot of my imagery can signify many different things,” she said.

The lattice-patterned “Sea Traveler” demonstrates Harms' artistic philosophy. A recurring form appears to approximate that of a fork, but it could also be seen as a menorah or a torch. The precise meaning the form takes is up to the person looking at the painting.

“It's not always important that somebody understand what an image means specifically, it's about looking at it in a larger context,” Harms said.

Harms' sister-in-law and Datz's sister, muralist Margot Datz, will also be featured in the show even though she currently resides in Martha's Vineyard. Margot, who illustrated five books with Carly Simon, is also the lone member of the family to make a living as an artist.

Her and Stephen's brother-in-law, landscape painter George Dugan, was also their art professor at SUNY Cortland. The abundance of artists in the family makes for animated discussions about their craft at holidays.

Esther Miller and her three children occupy the wall space in the Cayuga County Chamber of Commerce this month. Although each work is labeled with the name of the Miller who created it, the tags are hardly necessary to help one see that each member of the family has their own style.

“I love it; it brings us together,” Esther said. “I love to see what they've done because each of us is different.”

The delicate oil paintings done by Esther dominate the gallery space. She depicts her human subjects and outdoor settings with bold strokes that suggest an impressionist style. In one work, the light splashing a young boy's head as he sits beside a window is captured with thick dashes of white paint over his hair.

The exhibit encompasses the bulk of Esther's paintings. She paints in the spare time she finds from her work as a special education teacher at Hillside Children's Center.

“It's energizing for me,” she said.

Her 25-year-old son, Charlton, recently graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in computer animation. His work is presented at the gallery in the form of frames from an animation of a lizard-like creature and a bird. Their richly detailed surfaces hide hours of work to fashion the figures' infrastructures.

“He can draw dot-to-dot from the inside out, to make sure it moves in the right direction,” Esther said.

Esther's 23-year-old daughter, Ashley, will soon study woodworking and metalworking at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts. She contributed a captivating self-portrait to the show that leaves her hair and clothing blank white while her face is flush with the same warm orange hue of the background.

Lindsey, the youngest of the family at 21, is also the least represented, with only a painting and a shimmering pencil sketch of a pair of hands in the show. She is currently pursuing a Middle Eastern Studies/Arabic major at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City while she works as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“She just draws for fun,” Esther said.

The family's fondness for art took form when Charlton, Ashley and Lindsey were children growing up in Arizona and Utah.

“I'd stay home and they'd draw like crazy on the floor,” Esther said. “It was just kind of a fun thing we did together.”

As her children continue to pursue art and other areas of interest on the other side of the country, Esther remains in her native Cayuga County to showcase the fruits of her family's artistic ambitions. This month, she is joined by other families to celebrate the relativity of art.

Staff writer David Wilcox can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net