This month, Tyndall Galleries in Durham is presenting the North Carolina debut of the work of South Carolina painter Elena Madden, who has previously exhibited extensively in South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida. Madden's current oil-on-canvas paintings are influenced by her affinity for organic images and the fact that she lives near a large body of water (see "Marina," pictured). Her paintings employ a "larger than life" perspective, taking natural images into the realm of the abstract. Madden says her personality is captured in the details of the paintings, the waves and flecks of colors reflecting an animated human quality. "I find the feeling of the viewer being alone with nature as equally interesting as the feel of another human presence involved into the composition," she says. The show runs through Sept. 1. Call 683-8489 for details.

Steve Albini is known for his time with the band Big Black back in the '80s, for his production work with Nirvana (on their album In Utero), and for his current band Shellac. Now he can even be credited with inspiring a visual artist, Chicago's Myke Adams, whose current group of paintings is based on songs from Shellac's new album, 1000 Hurts. "I went through a breakup and a friend of mine gave me the CD for 1000 Hurts just to help me get over it," Adams told The Independent recently by phone from Chicago. "I started to paint and that's all I listened to for about a month--it was kind of a therapy session for me." Adams admits this group of paintings is "somewhat gruesome," and he sees the Shellac record as "a concept album about revenge on a man's ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend." Adams has worked with rock bands before, and has taken a "touring rock band approach" to showing his art by treating it like an actual tour. This week, his unframed, unstretched acrylic paintings will simply be unrolled and tacked to the walls of local record stores. See them at The Record Exchange on Avent Ferry Road in Raleigh from noon to 9:30 p.m. on July 27 (call 831-2300 for details), at The Record Exchange on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh from noon to 8:30 p.m. on July 28 (call 831-9666 for details), and at The Record Exchange on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. on July 29 (call 933-6261 for details).