LUCRETIA TORVA: REFLECTING REALITY
- Artemizia Foundation
- Jul 23
- 2 min read
August 16 - September 28, 2025
Join Lucretia Torva for the opening
August 16th from 1-4pm
at Artemizia Foundation’s Gallery 818
About Lucretia Torva
Lucretia Torva grew up in Scotland and France… a great foundation for an artist.
Torva has transformed the streets and interiors of Phoenix with vibrant murals since settling in the city in 1997. Whether she is stretching five stories high on a lift or sweeping color across a neighborhood wall, murals are both her canvas and her conversation with the public—bringing fine art technique to people who might never step inside a gallery.
A lifelong attraction to gleaming, reflective surfaces threads through every project. Chrome fenders, glass storefronts, polished helmets—Torva’s brush turns them into dazzling mirrors that bounce surrounding colors back at the viewer. These “shiny objects” are never mere embellishment; their reflections create a dialogue between abstract shimmer and realistic detail, inviting passers by to look twice and find themselves inside the work.
Extensive childhood travels across Europe nurtured Torva’s passion for art, culture, and history, and instilled an awareness of humanity’s beauty and fragility. Surrealism, her touchstone since undergraduate days, still guides her in layering subconscious imagery beneath lustrous surfaces. After earning an MFA from the University of Illinois and a brief stint in academia, she embraced full time painting in 2000.
Commissioned walls quickly became Torva’s studio. From civic landmarks to festival sites, each mural is an open air stage where she champions social justice and civil rights themes. A Phoenix project honoring community resilience earned the city’s Mayor’s Arts Award in 2021. International invitations followed, including a mural festival in Tasmania, where the island’s light inspired some of her brightest metallic reflections yet.
Torva keeps an eclectic calendar: completing private commissions, curating the Street Artist Stage and the Arizona State Fair, mentoring emerging painters, and—thanks to a 2023 Artist to Work grant—realizing a large scale installation that bathes visitors in shimmering color. Whatever the venue, expect walls that gleam, narratives that resonate, and a signature shine that turns everyday surfaces into luminous storytelling.
Members: FREE
Non-members: $10 (includes museum admission)
