You get the feeling that Lorne Wagman, who lives near Owen Sound, Ont., doesn't have to travel very far to get to his subject matter.

There is nothing conventionally splendid about what he paints -- no gloomy, stygian forests or uplifted hills or sublime shores. You feel, rather, that Wagman actively prefers the stuff of rural everydayness: moss and lichen covered boulders, weeds (Burdock plants are clear favourites), overgrown stumps, rain-heavy clouds.

His current exhibition at Toronto's DeLeon White Gallery is made up of watercolours and oil paintings. Generally speaking, the watercolours, which are sometimes used as studies for the bigger paintings, are better. The big paintings look dry, clenched and static. By contrast, the watercolours are vivid, forceful and crackling with energy.

Rock and Moss, 1999 Gouache on paper

In a painting like Rocks and Moss, the moss vibrates electrically over a rock made up of agitations of grey-green and grey-blue. You can feel the moss's fecundity, its inexorable creep. Wagman's watercolour Yellow Burdock is a pigmented bonfire of flame-like yellow leaves, punctuated with purple blossoms like rising sparks. In his Mossy Stump, the rotten nub of tree, half-covered with a counterpane of moss, looks as if it's being devoured by a green starfish. This is nature painting of the highest order -- direct, spontaneous, euphoric and adoring.

$700-$5,800. Until May 25, 1096 Queen St. W., Toronto; 416-597-9466.

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