The Exhibition opens on Sunday, July 25, at the Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Park in Hollywood.

In his painting, Torrey has depicted a small lake in Baldwin Hills in the romantic translucence of the turn of the century, "I think that the title is just as seductive as the image," he says. "Not only is it really set in Los Angeles, but it's a 'secret' spot, which I think adds to its intrigue."

Torrey, a Palisades resident, was one of 79 artists selected from a total of 500 entrants by juror Adriano Pedrosa, an artist, curator and writer living in Brazil.
Using the whole city for inspiration, from the bluffs in Pacific Palisades to the Central Library and Angels Flight downtown, Torrey has found subject matter to match his plein air technique. By combining the layering of pigment found in classical painting which gives the scene verisimilitude with the obvious brush strokes of the Impressionists, he moves back and forth between the conscious and intuitive level.

Torrey himself is a hybrid artist who, on the one hand, plants his landscapes in the surety of volume and performance, and then gives them a feeling of a moment captured. But, far from the turn-of-the century painters who ventured out with easel and brushes, Torrey finds the modern-day equivalent a mountain bike and a camera. "I can get to places on my bike where I couldn't drive, and get the perspective on a landscape that I want."
Back home in his studio he transforms the photograph by first sketching the structure of the scene and then obliterating it with a wash and successive glazes of acrylic pigment. The finished painting reverberates with reflections and shadow.

With plans for a sale at Sotheby's in October, Torrey is looking forward to a summer of hard work reproducing his landscapes from acrylic and print into pastels. "It all came about because I wanted to provide a less expensive price category for the sale, so I developed a series of Iris prints [a large-format, ink-jet print] of the landscapes. But Sotheby's does not yet accept computer prints as mainstream art, so I decided to do pastels."
Actually, Torrey says that the pastels have turned out beautifully. "People like them, my wife, my friends especially the modulation I can get in the pigments." His next subjects are the Hollywood sign from Lake Hollywood, and Will Rodgers State Park with the barn. "I've been up there several times on my bike, and I just think that barn is wonderful. I'll have to think of a way to get it into the scene."

A reception for the artist in the Los Angeles Juried Exhibition will be held from 2 to 6 p.m. on July 25 at the barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd. (west of Vermont). Contact: (213) 485-4581.