Father-daughter Torinas' artistic visions similar yet different

Clare Torina's "Vision Quest" merges classically conceived landscape with a touch of the surreal.

With current exhibit "In the Blood," Dixon Gallery and Gardens continues its commitment to both local artists and to intriguing adjunct shows.

Displayed through Sept. 26 in the Mallory and Wurtzburger side galleries are seven new works each by Memphis-affiliated father and daughter painters John and Clare Torina.

This is the first time the two have shared a show, which has been timed as something of a farewell exhibit for Clare, who begins graduate studies this fall at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Although either artist could hold his or her own in a solo show, the combination of filial talent presents wonderful levels of association and contrast for the viewer.

The sun sets with a final burst of bright paint in John Torina's "Night Fall."

Clare Torina's "Vision Quest" merges classically conceived landscape with a touch of the surreal.

Such correlation of style and form made Dixon curatorial assistant Julie Pierotti want to organize the show in the first place.

"They're really different on one hand, and on the other there are a lot of similarities," says Pierotti. "It's just fun having their work next to each other."

What they share includes a love for oil paint, representationalism, and the imprint of historical predecessors, especially those of the 17th century. A mutual technique can also be discerned, notably a sensuous use of color and control of line at once exact and free. The result is that each captures on canvas the fleeting gesture, the transient moment.

Differences inform the show as well. John Torina works in landscapes that are impressionist on the surface but more deeply imbued with a low horizon balance of sky and ground straight from such Dutch landscape masters as Salomon van Ruysdael and Jan van Goyen. Were it not for the local giveaway of a title, "Shelby Farms," for example, would fit right at home in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, while in the masterwork "Night Fall," bold streaks of yellow and orange paint become the final burst of sun-setting light, the creative and natural impulse merging into one visual experience.

In contrast, University of Memphis graduate and former Dixon employee Clare Torina prefers portraiture and a postmodern appropriation of the past that finds whimsy at every turn. In "Rapture," a dog's hind parts are exposed midleap against a glowing Aurora Borealis in the background. It's one of the oddest, if not jarring, juxtapositions you will ever see in a museum setting and also one of funniest and most inexplicably joyful.

Other equally striking canvases include "Vision Quest," in which the phantasmagoric fur hat that covers a woman's face mirrors ominous thunder clouds forming behind, a merger of classically conceived landscape with a Dalí-esque sense of the surreal. Mostly, the subjects in Clare's portraits have the kind of quirky, direct stares -- as if caught in midemotion -- that recall the expressions of royalty, court patrons and jesters by Spanish master Diego Velasquez.

In "Museum Guard," the woman on watch stands before a heavy silhouette, friendly yet stern and entirely immovable as if to say to the viewer, "Go no further. This space is sacred."

Clare's biggest fan, of course, is Dad, who notes proudly, "She's not intimidated about humanity at all; she's a fully developed soul."

Make that two old souls.

"In the Blood," works by John and Clare Torina

The exhibit runs through Sept. 26 in the Mallory and Wurtzburger Galleries of Dixon Gallery and Gardens, 4339 Park. Call 761-5250, or go to dixon.org.

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