THE VALLEY

At least three things can be expected from any new batch of paintings by Susan Clover: They will be masterful translations of photographs, they will depict healthy young people immersed in aquatic environments, and the ambiance will be intoxicatingly sensuous. Though too traditional and too enamored of Southern California’s pool-side hedonism to be very fashionable, Clover can be counted upon as a superior figure painter whose alla prima technique agrees perfectly with her subject matter.

Expectations come true in her latest show of oils, although some works stray from swimming pools to more natural locations. A girl is showered by a waterfall in a pair of small works, while two other canvases feature people wading through a stream in Palm Canyon. In one, a couple is absorbed by the landscape and each other’s company; in the other, three young women appear as outsiders, gingerly entering unknown territory. You can almost feel the rocks on their feet as they pick their way through the water.

The strength of all these pictures, apart from their technical bravura, is their merger of natural spectacles and private moments. Though drenched in the unabashed beauty of water, light, verdure and human bodies, this work has a strong introspective quality. It’s most evident and affecting in a group of cropped portraits that look down at an angle on tousled teen-agers. Despite their sense of belonging to a safe world of summer vacations, friends and de rigueur earrings, the youths seem to be at a pensive moment of transition. We see them just before they become worried adults with house payments, divorces and their own set of leisured children. (Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, to June 30.)