The Valley

Painter Susan Clover skirts the boredom of much Photo-Realism by turning moist oil into limpid neighborhood and mountain pools filled with wet, good-looking young people enjoying the California sun. Her name is synonymous with these lush, sun drenched water scenes. A female jumping through crystalline water and a couple playing on a river raft blend an oscillating impressionistic vision with the verisimilitude of photography.

Clover wrests these amazingly life-like results from an unfinicky, tactile approach. Rocks are built from energetic daubs, water and light from smooth white streaks that look as if they were mixed and applied by hand rather than brush. “On the Patio” depicts the strongly shadowed faces of handsome Summer-of-’42 young men casually talking on a beautifully shaded porch that filters bright clean light through the flicker of foliage.

“Palmetto” proves that Clover’s subject is less Southern California prosperity than her long fascination with figures in changing light. Three bathing-suited women look away from us, gathering bits of nature. One squats, one sits, one bends. If you look beneath the

contemporary garb, you can almost see one of those Renaissance anatomical exercises by Pollaiuolo where the real story line is the formal and expressive potential of a tilted neck or the linear sensuality of a shoulder highlighted by sun.

Clover is an expert portraitist and this sometimes works against her group paintings. Some, like a threesome in a desert expanse or the two garlanded girls laying side by side in “Verbena,” look staged and emotionally disconnected, each person a painting unto itself. (Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., to June 30.)