Frank Sampson: New Paintings highlighted recent efforts by the well-known eighty-something Boulder artist, who, despite the rise of abstraction and conceptualism, has devoted his entire output to figurative painting. But his approach to his depictions of people, animals and birds has been anything but traditional, instead falling into the magic-realist camp. Sampson has created an oddball body of work that's one part storybook and one part dream — with some of those dreams being nightmares. There are weird hybrids of animals with human qualities, and frequent appearances by scary-looking jesters and clowns. Set in Old Masterish surroundings, these characters are either whimsical and childlike or ominous and threatening. It might not be possible to teach an old painter new tricks, but it's also impossible to keep one like Sampson down.