Interpreting might be the wrong word to have in mind while looking at Ray Smith's art. It's more fruitful to simply experience it first and delay any thoughts about explaining it, since the symbolism often seems as private as that of dreams.

A good place to start might be the biggest painting in his exhibition at the Lux Art Institute in Encinitas, "La Grand Vache" (10 feet tall and almost 21 feet wide). The title loosely translates as big cowhide - and that's what the background pattern resembles.

There's a shadowy pair of intertwined figures, as tall as the painting itself, sporting a floral pattern. One grips a set of masks in one hand, each tied to a string; the other, a flashlight. Additional heads float free of any hand. Then, there are frogs, immense in proportion to the human faces in the picture.

This is also the oldest painting on view, dating from 1991. And while it's not dated, in the pejorative sense of that word, it does remind us that his style of fragmented imagery was prevalent in figurative painting of the 1980s and 1990s - and part of the era's Zeitgeist. David Salle's work from those years is a prime example, though Smith is technically a better painter.

"La Grand Vache" creates a mood, a disquieting one - and mood, more than meaning, is a central quality of Smith's paintings.

He is the first artist in the Lux's second season of exhibitions/residencies. Smith, who splits his time between New York; Cuernavaca, Mexico; and Brownsville, Texas (where his family has roots going back to the 19th century), spent about two weeks at the Lux at the end of September. During his time here, he completed another large-scale painting, "Santa Fe," this one 7-plus-feet tall and 12-½ feet wide.

It's not as as cryptic as "La Grande Vache" and it's less dense with imagery. He's rendered two horses, but not two complete horses. Their bodies are fused in the hind portion, with one head facing left and the other right. There is a matching saddle and rider on each, though one rider is distinct and the other appears faded, as if he's dematerializing before our eyes. The horse's head on the left is normal, while the one on the right is skeletal. Dogs run across the scene, which is stark, unreal terrain. The picture is an allegory about mortality or the life cycle.

Generally, Smith's imagery is what lures your eye first. But some of the life of his pictures is rooted in his skill with paint. His surfaces are alternately smooth and textured, thin and thicker. He also has a curious palette - colors are alternately bright and bleached - but it suits his work well.

The smaller paintings are less compelling. One partial exception is "Washington in the Persian Gulf" (1997), with its levitating head and its patterned female body in a geometric landscape. You sense he revels in obscurity here and the title is pretentious, but the image lingers in the mind's eye.

Another exception: his "Dog Portraits" (2001). The nine in this show are part of a larger set of pictures that were done in preparation for a tapestry. They're small pictures, a different type of dog in each; some stare at you, others are in profile or three-quarter profile. All of them are charming.