Adrienne Kaplan’s “The Pursuit of Happiness” exhibit finds this local painter scratching well beneath the surface of her chosen topic: America at beachside rest and play.

It’s a telling display—a University of Michigan Health System Gifts of Art presentation—whose measured wisdom reflects the idea that one cannot always judge a situation by its appearance.

As with her February 2006 “Current Paintings in Acrylic and Watercolor” at the WSG Gallery — and like her “Surf and Turf” exhibit earlier last January at this same gallery — “The Pursuit of Happiness” finds Kaplan ruminating on what looks like fun in the summer sun.

Kaplan’s artistic strength in lies in her consistent assessment of the environment around her. For as she said about her 2006 exhibit, “I find it freeing to be able to communicate through color and brushstroke, to ‘tell my stories’ with immediate expression unencumbered by process.”

Not much has changed from that standpoint. Kaplan still has a decided flair for colorful expression. Rather, what’s changed is the “story” Kaplan finds. For where she’d been previously enamored for the most part with impression — working through a semi-representative exploration of her composition — Kaplan’s now incorporating as much reporting as she explores her creativity.

The first hint comes from last January’s “Surf and Turf” exhibit at the WSG Gallery. That show showed Kaplan expanding on her prior insight.

Yet as she said in that effort’s artist statement, these works are not merely conceptual. Rather, she said, they start “from something concrete in my visual world and become an interplay between the paint on the surface and my idea and feeling about the subject I’ve chosen.”

And it’s at this juncture that this latest Gifts of Art exhibition becomes a transition in Kaplan’s work. For as she says of this show, these paintings “are propelled by the idea of the tradition of the middle class American vacation and leisure time. I want to document that experience which may be growing less and less available.

“The title, ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ holds some irony because in most instances the people look distracted or even lonely in this beautiful, liberating environment. This truly is the ‘pursuit’ of happiness.”

In this instance, it also includes a richer pursuit of what it means to craft art because at its most fundamental, Kaplan’s work hasn’t objectively changed. These paintings are akin to her prior series of acrylic paintings: Each painting showing us an America as seemingly comfortable as the season itself.

But there’s a subtle profundity to these latest artworks. Her subjects are mindful of their pursuit of happiness — or perhaps, as she implies, a little too much so.

Her 11 acrylic on cotton canvas paintings at the UMHS are notable for their quickly executed expressive loose facture whose thickened pigments create a distinct texture and mood. In fact, their very looseness is what Kaplan seems to be striving toward; it makes the paintings crackle with energy.

Yet even as the compositions themselves are succinct commentaries on contemporary America, there’s a focus that indeed seems the opposite of relaxation. As her 36 x 48 inch “Pursuit of Happiness” trio all show, America is working mightily at having a good time. Still, there’s not really a lot of leisure to show for it.

So even as the models in her “Pursuit” series lounge, there’s a preoccupation in their posture that belies their intensity. And this is even more so in a vertically oriented acrylic painting of roughly the same dimensions called “Why,” in which a middle-aged contemplative man is at decided counterpoint with the his relaxed environment. He may be in the pursuit of happiness, yet it doesn’t really seem so.

One thing does seem certain: Having shifted her interest from a relatively detached depiction of events around her; it will be interesting to see how much reporting Kaplan continues to produce in her art. It seems too facile to say this is a pursuit of happiness — but it’s fair to say it’s a pursuit of meaning.

“Adrienne Kaplan: The Pursuit of Happiness — Acrylic on Canvas” will continue through June 10 at the University of Michigan Health System Main Lobby Floor One Gifts of Art Gallery, 1500 E. Medical Center Dr. Gallery hours are 8 a.m.-8 p.m. daily. For information, call 734-936-ARTS.