california coast oil painting
It has been such a mild summer here on our piece of coastline. I’ve been wondering when the hot days would arrive. So often we get a good blast of heat in October and as the summer ticked away, with cooler than usual temperatures, I kept wondering if September and October were going to be blazing. The heat always shows up, it’s just a matter of when.
Evening Sizzle, 14x14”, oil on birch panel
Summer is closing in and the longest day of the year is on the horizon. Sullivan Goss is launching new shows at the gallery with an opening reception happening this week for First Thursday events. I have a brand new painting fresh off the easel being shown in the Summer Salon in their back gallery. I’m so honored to be hanging with artists John Nava, Hank Pitcher, Nathan Huff and Susan McDonnell, to name just a few. AND I get to be on the wall next two lovely Lockwood DeForest paintings.
Patricia Chidlaw is in the front gallery with a beautiful show celebrating the swimming pool and the in main gallery FORMALIZE: Strategies for Abstraction, an exhibition that emphasizes the formalist view of abstract art.
So much to see and enjoy as we slide into the new season.
Western Shore 48x24” Oil on Birch Panel
Bloom (detail) Quadtych, 29.5 x 78”, oil on panel
BLOOM will be part of SEA CHANGE opening a week from today at Sullivan Goss. Hope to see you all around the gallery.
I love to be hanging with friends and beloved colleagues.
Coastal Fog can be viewed now at Sullivan Goss through July 26, 2021 beside the works of John Nava, Nathan Huff, Patricia Chidlaw, Phoebe Brunner, Angela Perko, Colin Campbell Cooper, Lockwood DeForest and many more.
Left to right, Nathan Huff “A Sudden Lurch to Help”, Angela Perko “Refugio Beach, West End #2”, Nicole Strasburg “Coastal Fog” and John Nava “Summerland 4-2”.
Installation day
January Passing Storm installed in its new home in Santa Barbara. It’s always wonderful to see work placed in such beautiful environments. The paintings sing in a new way when they move from the studio into living spaces.
Sullivan Goss Gallery installation
Press release from the gallery:
Sullivan Goss is pleased to offer an exhibition devoted to quietude for the new year. Battered by the pandemic, a hotly contested election, and an atmosphere marked by dread and hysteria, Gallery curators felt that the world could use a space for peace and contemplation. Drawing from its artists’ studios, collector consignments, and its own treasure vault, Sullivan Goss was able to assemble sixteen works spanning from 1890 to today that invite a meditative or peaceful state of mind. Installed with ample breathing room in the Gallery’s largest exhibition space, Sullivan Goss hopes to offer a refuge to weary artists, collectors, and visitors.
Each work has been carefully selected both to typify the artist’s best work and to help viewers slip away into reverie. Stylistically, the works range from late 19th and early 20th century Tonalist and Impressionist evocations by National Academicians Leon Dabo (1864-1960), Lockwood de Forest (1850-1932), and Colin Campbell Cooper to midcentury and contemporary “spacey” abstractions by William Dole (1917-1983) and Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967) to contemporary Tonalist and abstract works by Gallery stalwarts like Whitney Brooks Abbott, Meredith Brooks Abbott, Ken Bortolazzo, Susan McDonnell, Chris Peters, Nicole Strasburg, and Sarah Vedder.
Art can be an effective emotional trigger. High contrast works with bright, hyper-saturated colors and dynamic compositions can excite us – stimulating increased energy and mental activity. Paintings and drawings that use a more restrained and harmonized palette or whose imagery and compositions invoke the pastoral or the dreamy have the opposite effect. They calm us. They soothe. Those in search of peace & quiet are hereby advised: you’ll find it at 11 East Anapamu Street for the months of January and February.
Morning Estuary, 48x24”, Oil on Birch Panel
Sullivan Goss Gallery, 11 East Anapamu, Santa Barbara
If you are looking for some much needed peace and beauty Sullivan Goss has three terrific shows on the walls now and the doors are open to visitors. 100 Grand, the annual celebration of local art in small format, still has plenty of precious gems awaiting homes. And in the back room is the Winter Salon which features many new works by the gallery’s stable of artists. Tomorrow we are expecting the first rain of winter, what a great way to spend some time if you can’t be outside!
Works by Nicole Strasburg, Ken Bortalazzo and Patricia Chidlaw
Morning Tide 36x60” oil on birch panel, 2007
A warm and hopeful wish this season for a prosperous new year. May we all find peace and joy while we wait for a vaccine that will restore us to a modicum of normalcy after almost a year of uncertainty.
I seek daily to find moments of glory, joy, peace and magic. Today without the gatherings of friends and family, the sharing of meals and stories of Christmases past I decided to seek warmth from nature. This time of year always holds the promise of a low tide and beautiful skies at the shoreline. Today was glorious and I was reunited with an old friend that I have not seen in a few years.
In 2007 I painted Morning Tide, an image from our local point during a minus tide. The sand recedes during the extreme winter tides revealing amazing rock formations. This one appeared looking like a lone dinosaur with it’s young on a beautiful morning beach walk. I was elated today to rediscover my friend waiting for me in the December tideline.
It wasn’t a hug from family or friends but it was a wonderful connection that reminded me of home, someone waiting to welcome me, the familiar that leads you to believing that everything is going to be okay.
Blessings and gratitude to friends and family near and far. May you all find the magic in the small moments this holiday.
Campus Point, Low Tide, December 25, 2020