Juan Alonso, "Lifted," 30 inches square, image via Francine Seders Gallery

Artists who start out corny rarely grow into their work. They continue to bump around on the outside of their endeavor, sometimes polishing a formula and other times lurching from style to style without hitting pay dirt in their own territory.

Seattle's Juan Alonso is an exception. When I first saw his paintings, they were full of Cuban cultural stereotypes, aiming for Robert Colescott but falling into a Caribbean version of Peter Max.

Nothing will come of this, I thought. Alonso tried performance, starring himself as an insect pinned on the page. In documentary photos, it looked overblown and underfed.

He kept painting. He traveled through what I remember as an acrylics-on-canvas bloody sheets period, tried public art and kept painting.

What he's doing now, two decades into his career, amazes me. Hints of it were there all along, but these small ink and pencil abstractions could not have been predicted.

OK, yes, they owe something to Darren Waterston, but they are essentially Alonso's, springing from his cultural base. They are homages to the decorative flourishes of old Havana, now in ruins and turned by the artist into smoke, vaporous trails edging toward extinction.

Reminds me of something the sports writer Red Smith said once, leaving the newsroom after turning in his copy. "All the major arteries were dry, but I managed to find a small vein."

In a small vein, Alonso found a way to make his work matter. He opens today at the Francine Seders Gallery, with a reception Sunday, 2-4 p.m.