LA CIENEGA AREA

Hank Pitcher’s painting always has had at least two sides to it: a lush hedonism reflecting the natural beauty of his Santa Barbara surroundings and the somber heroics of monumentally scaled people. In art historical terms, his work has been received as a merger of Matisse and Beckmann.

Both aspects are represented in a current show that accentuates the split in his sensibility and introduces troublesome new sources. There’s a gorgeous, well-structured seaside landscape, “Low Tide at Sands Beach”; an equally competent skyward view of “The Coral Casino” and cropped views of vegetation, in which plants are sculptural individuals that never fade into a haze of greenery. So much for the soft side of Pitcher.

The hard side--and the trouble --comes in masterful updates of American regionalists. “Roy at Coal Oil Point,” the most striking piece, presents Pitcher as the Rockwell Kent of the tropics. In this monolithic composition, a bronzed brick of a surfer poses with his board--as if it were a fishing trophy--against a cluster of phallic succulents. “Remember Me,” a moony depiction of a young man serenading his honey, might have been done by Thomas Hart Benton in Hawaii. “A Young Woman Holding a Shell” is a California sunbather gone Neo-Classical.

These peculiar images of beach life are part of a series called “Anadyomene,” after the interpretation of Aphrodite that has the Greek goddess rising from the sea. The mythological connection seems slight, however, in the face of more obvious art historical sources and problems inherent in reworking them.

In the process of looking backward--a fashionable direction now--Pitcher’s painting has solidified to the point of stodginess. There’s a staged, theatrical character to the work; the natural light and breath have gone out of it and the color has turned flat if not lurid. “Roy” and “Remember” have the look of high camp, but that stance seems so out of character for Pitcher that we have to assume they are not intended to be sendups. What he does intend isn’t clear, so we wait for the next chapter in the career of a gifted painter. (J. Darraby Gallery, 8214 Melrose Ave., to July 7.)