Whether it's the stately beauty of a long, lean leg, the sentiment in a thoughtful turn of phrase, or the rounded rump of a copulating damsel fly, the heart wants what the heart wants.

And that's exactly the idea heating up Love, Lust, and Desire, the latest show at McGowan Fine Arts in Concord, running through Feb. 14.

The show includes more than 200 works cozily snuggled up together in the gallery.

The majority of the work is smaller than a sheet of paper, and priced between $25- $300. The idea, said Sarah Chaffee, co-owner and director of McGowan Fine Art Gallery, was to have pieces that could be given as a valentine and a show that was intimate enough to make into a date, so a sweetheart could pick out his or her own valentine.

"We very rarely do theme shows," Chaffee said. "But this one was born of necessity. An artist backed out, and after I panicked, I figured February - it's Valentine month. And so I sort of cooked up this idea. . . . I really encouraged my artists to have fun with the themes and really run with them."

And run they did.

"I was really surprised by how many different interpretations they came up with," Chaffee said. "Love for animals, love of food - I had one artist tell me she couldn't get all worked up over lust, but she could get worked up over a chocolate sundae. So she did several pieces with food . . . It didn't have to be a valentine and it didn't have to have hearts . . . It was anything that could inspire love, or lust or desire."

Artist Sid Ceasar decided to bring out the seductive nature of, well, action figures.

"I do portraits of Anime toys," said Ceasar, 33, of Nashua. "I sort of went with the desire theme. They're not racy or provocative, they are nudes done with toys. . . . When you first look at them, they have a tantalizing or titillating quality to them, and with that comes the feelings you assign to those things. But then you

look again, and you see there's something off kilter about them. And then it hits you, 'Oh look, they're toys.' And then you bring to it what you feel about having those feelings about a toy."

Ceasar isn't the only one having a laugh with the show's themes. Hanover artist Elizabeth Mayor, 72, found her inspiration for her miniature wood carvings in some lusty barnyard critters.

"It's not animals making love or anything like that," Mayor said. "But there's one of geese with very red beaks touching beaks. And another of a cat being very seductive. There's no male cat there. But she is still in a rather seductive pose . . . And I have one of a group of ravens just looking at each other lustfully.

"As an artist I generally work in the abstract or with animals. I don't really do work with humans. Plus interpreting the theme with animals seemed more humorous to me. Humor is a big part of my work."

But it isn't just the barnyard animals rolling in the hay; the bugs are getting some action too.

"I have an artist in the show who is a naturalist," Chaffee said of scientific illustrator Adelaide Murphy Tyrol of Vermont. "She did pieces with the damsel fly, which sort of looks like a dragon fly, but much smaller. The end part of the body is curved. And when these bugs copulate they attach at the end and form a perfect heart and their abdomens are a perfect shade of red . . . And these are real animals that include these shapes in nature."

Single page