Why are the most beautiful creatures often the most deadly? If anyone knows the answer, it may be Melissa Findley. Never before has a collection of characters — both mythic and mundane — been so pleasing to the eye, yet so dangerous to immortal soul.

A few of Ms. Findley’s portraits reveal cunning, but ultimately benign souls, gently pondering their place in the world. Other works, however, paint a far darker image of delicate deceit and convoluted chicanery, wrapped in introspective packages of simmering, sensual energy. Yet even these darkest hearts seem somehow capable of the noblest of virtues: love, loyalty and perhaps even brief flirtations with compassion or kindness.

One commnality among all of these deviously charming men and wickedly vivacious women, however, is that each possesses the single most combustible combination of attributes imaginable: the skills necessary to shape their world, and the audacity to use them.