Summer and the longest day of the year

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

Coming soon to Sundance Online

I love it that paintings have no expiration dates. Even though this was made following a 2009 excursion with beloved artist/writer Thalia Chaltas this painting quietly waited it’s turn to be out in the world in a bigger way.

Badwater, Death Valley was shipped off to Sundance for their catalog. I’m excited for this triptychs debut on the bigger stage this fall.

Badwater, Death Valley Triptych 29.5 x 58.5” oil on birch panel ©2009

January Passing Storm

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.

Opening at the Wildling Museum this April!

Bio/Mass: Contemporary Meditations on Nature

Weather Patterns project. 24 included in the Bio/Mass exhibit at the Wildling

Bio: Relating to life and living beings

Mass: A large body of matter crowded together

Artists are observers and interpreters of what they see around them, whether it is a social concern, the natural world, the built environment or their own unique vision. Often artists work in series, exploring a particular topic as they deeply observe their subject over time. For artists, this repetition can serve both as a meditative practice and a means of learning and understanding.

In this exhibition, artists were chosen who create work in series, examining some aspect of nature. They may be examining patterns in nature or the same location over a long period of time. Some combine and recombine singular elements that accumulate into a fascinating and revealing artwork or body of work.

These artists have transformed their fascination with deep observations of their individual environments into works that help us to see the beauty in the details of our world, celebrating both quiet and dramatic moments in nature.

Featured Artists

Scott Chatenever, Lynn Hanson, Dorothy Churchill-Johnson, Karen Kitchel, Maria Rendón, John Robertson, Sommer Roman, Carol Saindon, Catherine Eaton Skinner, Libby Smith, and Nicole Strasburg.

I'm in love, again

Frequently I’ve been asked “as an artist, how have you been affected by the pandemic? Has it changed your practice?” Most artists live a solo life in their studios, spending hours of time alone making, trying, striving to move their craft forward. In that regard, not a lot has changed. I am still in my studio every day but the one thing that is different is the lessening of outside distraction. There are no appointments to rush off to or times when a museum visit is scheduled, the days just melt into one another.

The downside for me, with all the solo hours regular studio practice usually includes visits with other artists to talk about work, travel to recharge the creative well, seeing other creative people in their pursuits of dance or music, writers talking of their craft. These pursuits are all ubiquitously missing. The resounding quiet does make it challenging on some days to find the creative thread.

Rather than dwell too long on the hunt for creativity I try to find ways to distract from what’s outside the studio door pressing in. I return to school days exercises like limiting your palette, changing substrates, or playing with color charts to keep the brushes fluid. Almost every time, when it comes to painting, I’m rewarded and I fall in love all over again.

Detail work in progress

color charts/color mixing

Peace & Quiet @ Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara

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