Alexander Bratenhal, who died of complications arising from AIDs in 1993, listened to funk music and R&B when he painted his lively, large-scale works teeming with social sature. One piece, “Space City,” reflects those big beats. “The piece is loud and rhythmic and funky,” said his sister, Laura Alderdice, an Inverness resident who is organizing a showing of her late brother’s work at Toby’s Gallery next month, as a fundraiser for KWMR. Mr. Bratenhal, born in 1946, grew up in Berkeley but spent summers and many weekends in Inverness, where his family kept a second home. He studied art in high school later at Stanford. Many of his works, heavily influenced by the art of Mexico’s indigenous Huichol people, were painted when he lived in Inverness full-time in the 1970s, Mr. Alderice said. But when he moved to the city, he had no studio. He worked as a hairdresser and painted little, though he was fully immersed in a new world there, she said. “Between psychedelia and gay liberation and other crazy stuff, it was an interesting time to say the least,” she noted. “The quieter, more serene version of [Alex] took over later, but people remember him as being a pretty wild character. He was very funny, very theatrical, very loud.” Yet, eventually tiring of city life, he moved to Humboldt in the ’80s and lived atop a remote mountain. In 1988, he was diagnosed with AIDs. He moved to Southern California and finally started painting in earnest again, but the dark humor and biting social commentary disappeared. “His work is divided into pre-diagnosis and post-diagnosis in some ways,” Ms. Alderdice said. The paintings shifted from a rendering of the outside world to more inward reflections. “The [later] pieces are smaller, but in some ways they are bigger. He let go of the social criticism and really celebrated life and became very spiritual.” During chemotherapy, Mr. Bratenhal felt depressed when he looked around the room at everyone sitting forlornly for hours as treatments dripped into their veins. So he brought his easel and paints with him and worked. Soon, Ms. Alderdice said, others in the room were knitting and journaling. “The room picked up energy. That’s the kind of influence he had,” she said. Lost and Found: The Paintings of Alexander Carl Bratenhal will show at Toby’s Art Gallery during the month of April. An art opening and funk dance party, deejayed by KWMR’s Fairfax Funkateer, will take place on Saturday, April 4, at 6 p.m.