Michael DeBonis' paintings can be so dense with overlapping images that he admits he sometimes gives himself a headache when he is making them.

It's no surprise that others have found his paintings confusing.

But, DeBonis, 44, of Farrell, makes no apologies for his work.

"They're confusing because life's confusing," said DeBonis, who opens a show Friday at Valley Arts Guild, Sharon.

When he's painting them, each line and swath has a logic to him.

"If you follow this stuff, it all goes someplace," he said of the lines. "It all goes with a bottle or a guitar or something. I want everything to meet someplace."

But he doesn't expect others to understand what he was trying to get at. Each painting derives from a feeling.

"People shouldn't try to figure them out," he said, acknowledging it is human nature to do that. "Just enjoy them."

You can't even take his titles as hard and fast clues to the paintings they mark. "Me" is not really about DeBonis, although there are certain elements that can be interpreted as derived from him.

"It could be about anybody, so that's why it's called 'Me,' " he said.

Some of his works are simply experiments in color. "Women of Wine" is primarily two colors, red and green, mixed and matched to see the kinds of colors that would result.

"I like to challenge colors to see what you can do with different colors," he said, acknowledging Picasso as a source for his colors.

DeBonis has developed motifs that tend to emerge over and over again: wine, women, guitars, movement.

"New Year's Morning" shows how too much of his favorite things can be hazardous to one's health. The painting's spilled wine and guitars with broken strings depict how he feels after a night of partying.

"City Dream" is an experiment in color of another sort.

"This was paint I had left over on my palette and I hate to waste it," he said, of the work that shows green, red, yellow and purple skyscrapers. "It's really not my style, but I like it. It's not intense enough for me."

Known initially for a series on the Holocaust, DeBonis still represents the painful side of life. Five women come together to visit their dying mother in "Sisters," and "Abyss of a Woman" depicts a pregnant woman who is undergoing some sort of agony.

In the two years since he debuted with a show at the guild, DeBonis has gained more confidence in his paintings, and learned to work much more quickly, even though he is painting on canvases that are as large as 7-foot square.

"I've been selling a lot," he said, adding that he hates to part with his work. "I've been getting a lot of commissions."

He said painting has become like an addiction for him, and he gets agitated when he can't paint for a while.

"I can thank my wife and kids for this," he said of the show that opens Friday. "I'm not home much. I spend my evenings here. But they know I love it."

DeBonis' show opens with a reception at 7 p.m. Friday at the guild, 10 Vine Ave. The show runs through April 30. Information: (724) 983-1834 and www.artgally.com/vag