"The Silent Ones'' (acrylic on canvas), by Michael Shores, in his show "Cloud Creatures and Other Delusions,'' at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, April 1-30.

He says that many of his paintings were "inspired by a visit to a sacred ancient place in the American Southwest where "I experienced an epiphany of biomorphic forms in sandstone....Perhaps a visit to another planet might be the closest feeling. Being there completely convinced me of the existence of an alien life form that existed million of year before man.''