Dana Torrey (310) 230-3278
Dana Torrey / 15332 Antioch St. #806 / Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
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Los Angles Times / AUGUST 2,1998
Magazine
THE BEST OF SOCAL
THE COURT PAINTERS
INSIDE STORY

THE COURT PAINTERS

They see the beauty in L.A.'s unloved and mundane, the too-bland tract houses and gone-to-seed neighborhoods, the parched arroyo under the smog-hazed sky. Judging from their luminous paints, artists Steve Hodowsky, Suong Yangchareon and Dana Torrey have found L.A. a royal place.

By Patt Morrison
For too many years, the Hollywood sign has managed to bigfoot vitally every other image of Los Angeles, to become the city's visual résumé. What it has obscured is the here-and-now L.A.---the lyrically modulated light of its palmy postcard vistas, sure, but the real city that labors and plays at the penumbra of those klieg lights.
That L.A. is acquiring its own court painters. They render it frankly and affectionately, in urban plein-air landscapes. They put to canvas the smog-hazed colors of its working-class cafes and bungalows, its gone-to-seed downtown splendors, the sun-and-shadow angles and colors of stucco walls and tile roofs.
These three artists, none of them native, are giving Los Angeles, in its third century, a canvas tour of its own undiscovered and uncherished self.
Three Plein-Air Painters Pay Court to L.A.
AUGUST 2, 1998 LOS ANGELES TIMES MAGAZINE
DANA TORREY Dana Torrey learned his craft on a coast-to-coast learning curve, from plant science student at the University of Massachusetts to medical illustrator to Pasadena art student to Hollywood.
There he painted movie backdrops and scenic set designs, forced perspective, architectural trompe l'oeil and a compression of space that Einstein could appreciate. "All of that forces you to consider what something in the real, 3-D world looks like when you have to compress it to 2-D."
Moreover, the movie work took him to "every bizarre little spot, every nook and cranny of L.A." that now shows up in his work: Angels Flight, the Central Library, the curve of the 210 Freeway in Pasadena where local plein-air artists have been putting paint to canvas since the turn of the century.
The charm and appeal of that style contrasted with the meticulousness of his medical artwork but demanded more of his own imagination and style than did movie backdrops. "If you're illustrating something for a magazine, it often is very literal. If you can paint something that isn't so literal but captures the sense, the spirit of something, it allows viewers to attach their perception to what they're looking at."
High noon and twilight, l'heure blue, are his favorite time/light/place combinations, although one winter morning "we had clouds, and I had to rush downtown to photograph them" for future painting.
"You're living in a city, but I love being outdoors, in nature, and L.A. is one of those few places you can be in both."
PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL KELLY
From top left, "Tall Tales" (1996), is a view of City Hall; "Plein-Air Arroyo" (1996), shows a vista, now spanned by the 210 Free-way, long popular with plein-air painters; and "Malibu Before the Fire" (1996), is a display of palm trees that were lost to fire that year. Above, the artist at his Pacific Palisades home.
LOS ANGELES TIMES MAGAZINE

FRIDAY, AUGEST 2, 1998