Father and Daughter Portraits as Art Sketches of Father and Daughter on a Canvas
Begetter and Girl Offer 'Edgy' Fine art Exhibition
JONATHAN DEVIN | Special to The Memphis News
The Dixon Gallery and Gardens offers high dissimilarity between exhibits of feminine Impressionism and fauna instincts with (top) "Helen M. Turner: The Woman's Point of View," and (bottom)"In the Blood: John Torina and Clare Torina." Photos: Courtesy of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens
Impressionism, with its serene, idyllic imagery, has long been a hallmark of the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, but exhibits opening in July are all about powerful contrasts.
"In the Blood: John Torina and Clare Torina," a begetter/daughter exhibition that opened on July 2 and runs through Sept. 26, presents startlingly different sides of one creative family unit, against a tableau of feminine impressionism.
"We've been doing gimmicky shows for the concluding twelvemonth and a half – it'due south very edgy and very beautiful," said Emily Halpern, the Dixon's communications manager. "We'd like to see new faces in (the galleries). We have the infinite and so we devote information technology to people making fine art right here and right now in Memphis."
John Torina, a Memphis native, works primarily in landscapes, many of which are from the Mississippi River Delta and other Southern regions, styled after the some of the great European masters. In i slice, tranquil sunshine dapples an biconvex awning of slender trees leading into the altitude of a dark-green tunnel. In others, ribbons of peppery pink and cherry-red ignite purple and bluish landscapes at sunset.
Clare Torina prefers effigy painting and her allusions are anything just silent.
"(Clare) graduated from the University of Memphis last summertime," said Halpern. "She'southward on her way to the Art Institute of Chicago and she grew up with her dad traveling and painting in his footsteps, doing effigy painting alongside of him. In the last year she's started doing portraits and also animals every bit well, jumbling the animal with the homo."
And that's the instance with the largest of her works, a self-portrait in front of a Thomas Cole mural, perhaps a nod to her father's works, in which Torina is covered in a fur coat, collar and lid then that only her mouth is visible. In that location'southward a hint of an errant, Mona Lisa smirk in her lips.
"(Clare) wants to brand you laugh, merely she wants to make you lot feel something and think as well," said Halpern.
The animal influences are more literal in other works such as "Bacchanal," a set of four pocket-size oil paintings on linen, each one begetting a different face in a moment of ecstatic expostulation. It is hard to determine whether the expressions are that of euphoria or pain, except on the only nonhuman portrait in the agglomeration, that of an ape bearing its teeth in a wide-mouthed screech.
Clare Torina worked at the Dixon in the past and used her connections in the exhibition, which includes a frontal portrait of a Dixon security guard, an African-American adult female with violet pilus who stands in forepart of a shadow.
Halpern herself posed for the eerily dark-green-tinted "Hysteria," in which she is dressed in a Victorian dress and backs away with a pained expression on her face. It as well is juxtaposed with a 2nd canvas of an emotional ape.
"Here, (Clare) is referencing the Victorian diagnosis of the hysteric woman," said Halpern.
On the more traditional side of things, the Dixon offers "Helen M. Turner: The Woman's Bespeak of View," an extensive, 45-piece retrospective on a Southern woman's take on Impressionism, which runs through September 19. The exhibition features almost exclusively female imagery in soft tones.
Also running through mid-September is "Tranquillity Spirit, Skillful Easily," forest prints, engravings and illustrations by Clare Leighton of plough-of-the-century rural farmers – workers living in nature even as engineering science advances.
In the gardens through the end of August are the sculptures of Iris Harkavy, a Memphis Higher of Art graduate whose colorful, folksy figures add an chemical element of whimsical Southern culture to the Dixon'due south current offerings.
Source: https://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2010/jul/26/father-and-daughter-offer-edgy-art-exhibition/print
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