The Valley

Moving surreptitiously through the park benches and beaches of Santa Monica armed with a camera, Ruth Bavetta takes unnoticed snapshots of seniors sunning or staring blankly, and of youths tanning oiled, taut bodies or huddling in intimate conversation. The paintings that Bavetta makes from these photos have been called photorealism but that’s a misnomer as there is an inbred awkwardness to the figures’ positioning, an inaccuracy to their anatomy and a foreshortening that gives scenes a bizarre, even distorted twist.

An instinctive and emotional colorist, the artist borrows her palette from the under belly of a rainbow trout, highlighting figures’ translucent skin, the folds of sun-blanched white frocks or the silvering hair of advanced age in incandescent pinks, lilacs and blues. All the above are in Bavetta’s voyeuristic peeks at elderly card players, skinny-legged grandpas in Bermuda shorts gazing pensively out to see the mood of a memory, or of a reality spied through the half-closed eyes of a reverie.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that in too many paintings awkward draftsmanship eventually yanks our attention away from the scenes’ pathos. In “The Dead Sunbather” and in another view of a Barbie-doll blonde who torques her body to look back at us, ill-placed depth cues and sketchy handling make protagonists look dwarfed. (Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, to Nov. 24)