This could be your story. Or stories. Jay Yen gives you a start, the first chapter, then you can be off recounting your own adventure. Or if you want to write a short story, look at “Sitting Squab,” “Abandoned Bus” or “Window Watching” and start scribbling away.

In his “Playing DC,” youngish people frolic with Washington bridges and monuments, opening the door to all sorts of observations about innocence lost and found – personal and political.

Jay uses a collection of techniques to make the picture come alive. The flatness of design is optically challenged by adding layers of cardboard or other materials to some figures in the composition. The layers produce shadows and highlights, and the story evolves as light sources change. Complex color patterns and unexpected cultural images are added by cutting and pasting snippets from magazines. A wax marker is used to suggest the location and background elements. The end result remains cool and uncluttered, but it connects – catches your curiosity.

What began as childhood doodling has naturally evolved into the ideas of art. Jay grew up in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and has lived in DC for five years. He is now the lead designer for the Hill Rag and, at 29, is living to be creative in all things. Art – painting, photography and music – brings “peace and joy” to his life.

Jay describes his work as evolving … that he is constantly looking for ways to make it better. But as technique is vacant without ideas, I suspect he will always stalk the perimeter of the mainstream – the expected – tasting, and at times, consuming thoughts that wander away from the pack. jynine1ninedesign@yahoo.com.

Jim Magner’s Thoughts on Art
For landscape painters, April is the month between seasons – an erratic wild and wonderful time. I have spent many cold, damp predawn hours on the Virginia bank of the Potomac waiting to catch a spectacular sunrise. Usually in vain. Too many suns rise secretly beyond a think spongy matt of steel gray – an enveloping blanket of water particles. And some mornings are so cloudless that it simply becomes brighter, then boop, a blinding blast of sun and it’s over.

But when the clouds are just right, with cirrus floating high in the heavens and the cumulus rising majestically on the horizon, with lower fingers of stratus clouds shooting north – racing wedges of geese that pry open the darkness and the lone rower in his shell that appears to flit over crimson waters like a dragonfly, the glorious orchestration begins.

The golds and yellows flicker and change places. Alizarins turn to rose and gulls soar on the high morning breezes. I stop my stomping and shivering in my hurried attempt to choose the right cat food cans that I have pre-filled with colors to place quickly on my tall canvas – supported by the large wooden warning sign.

I have to work fast as shafts of light release the monuments across the river from the night. Fittingly, Washington comes first and dominates the whole landscape, letting some beams pass to define Jefferson, while Lincoln begins to stir in his marble fortress. The capitol dome bounces in the distant gold light like a nervous ping-pong ball.

Songs of robins and the challenges of crows warm my back, and an amazing wood duck bobs in and out of the gentle swells that reach Virginia, and there is no greater reward anywhere on earth at that moment.

At the Museums

Degas to Diebenkorn
New Acquisitions
The Phillips Collection
1600 21st St. NW
To May 25
What makes a Diebenkorn is the same thing that makes a Degas. Both have inventive, exquisitely balanced compositions, with unexpected elements popping up here and there – crowding over in the corners and peeking in from the sides. The quality and application of the paint is understated yet so perfect. Too bad there is only one of each here, but that leaves plenty of room for other great works, 115 in all, and the introduction of 28 new, well-known artists to the permanent collection – check online for the names. The painters dazzle you with paint, and the photographers, notably Ansel Adams and Minor White hypnotize you with the patterns of life. And finally, there is a Pat Olyphant in the building. 202-387-2151, www.phillipscollection.org.

At the Galleries

“Imagine”
Capitol Hill Art League
545 Seventh St. SE
April 12-May 3
“Imagine” is a great art theme any time of the year, but it’s perfect for spring when all possibilities seem endless. The judge for the show is David Daniels, a widely known watercolorist who teaches painting at Montgomery College, the Smithsonian and privately in his Silver Spring studio. The dates for artists to enter are April 5, 9:30-11:30 a.m. and April 7, 9:30-11:30 a.m. Join the artists for a judge’s talk at the opening, April 12, 5-7 p.m. 202-547-6839, www.chaw.org.

“The Passion of Dimension”
The Foundry Gallery
1314 18th St. NW
April 2-27
Sculptor Catherine Bohrman explores space, dimension and color in a variety of forms and materials. Opening reception: April 4, 6-8 p.m. 202-463-0203, www.foundrygallery.org.

Don Kimes
Brazilian Printmakers
Hillyer Art Space
9 Hillyer Court NW
To April 25
In “After the Flood,” Don Kimes’ abstract “collage-like paintings” are derived from his previous works that were destroyed at his studio in 2003 and reflect on the experiences of nature, time, memory, loss and birth. The co-exhibit is of Brazilian contemporary printmakers, with techniques ranging from photoetching to dry point. 202-338-0680, www.artsandartists.org/artspace.html.

Marilee H. Shapiro
Gallery plan b
1530 14th St. NW
April 2-May 11
 Marilee H. Shapiro, at age 95, continues her livelong exploration of art and beauty. She moved to Washington during World War II and has been deeply involved in the local art scene. A sculptor for 70 years, she began using the computer as a painting tool a few years ago at 89. She now creates two-dimensional prints using shapes, scenes and constructions familiar in her older works. The show includes: sculpture, digital prints, and 3-D dioramas. The opening reception with the artist: April 5, 5-8 p.m. 202-234-2711, www.galleryplanb.com.

Nancy Wolf
Marsha Mateyka Gallery
2012 R St. NW
To April 19
In “Dragons Adrift: The New Chinese Landscape,” New York artist Nancy Wolf reflects on China’s frenzy of modernization that threatens to destroy whatever is left of its historic architecture and cultural traditions – treasures that have survived previous frenzies of cultural cannibalism – which seems to be as much a Chinese tradition as great art itself. She accomplishes this with precise graphite drawings that effectively juxtaposition the old with the new. 202-328-0088, www.marshamateykagallery.com.

Jack Hannula
Arts Club of Washington
2017 I St. NW
To April 26
Jack Hannula is one of the best working artists with Washington street scenes and has been traveling far and wide, pulling out the sensitivities of the places, especially structures, with an understanding of form and an increasingly sensitive palette. Opening reception: April 4, 6:30-9 p.m. 202-265-4960, www.jackhannula.com.