Merry wishes for the holiday!

Sulllivan Goss has done it again, another spectacular display from local artists in their annual 100 GRAND exhibition. Even though sales have been brisk there are still plenty of worthy entries waiting to be collected this holiday season.

Flight Song 1 10x10” oil on panel (FYI there is a Flight Song 2 that didn’t make the wall. You can ask to see it!)

After visiting the artpalooza in the front gallery, be sure not to miss the WINTER SALON in the back gallery. It is another space filled with myriad styles, sizes and colors for the collecting. Four of my paintings are on the wall accompanying other beauties by Nathan Huff, Phoebe Brunner, Hank Pitcher and Julika Lackner, to name a few.

When you weary of wandering the streets and stores in search of that perfect gift, stop in at the gallery to recharge your holiday spirit. Happy merry holiday!

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

SEA CHANGE catalog

We are about ready to send the catalog to press. Sullivan Goss has put up a digital preview HERE and Beth Taylor-Schott has outdone herself with an exceptional essay about the work. I’m speechless and grateful. Thank you Beth for the poetic expression of my visual experience.

Catalogs should be in the gallery by mid month.

SEA CHANGE officially opens

Please join me in celebrating a new exhibit at Sullivan Goss in Santa Barbara. It’s been 5 years since my last solo show and I’m returning to the subject of a perpetual obsession, the pacific ocean. After the many months pummeled by news of the world and forced seclusion, I offer you color and vast horizons.

The First Thursday reception has been cancelled for August but don’t let that stop you from the respite that the show can offer, a traveling armchair, a breeze blowing onshore, sunshine radiating from the work.

A catalog for the show is also in the works, look for it mid month.

With hopes of seeing you around the gallery, be well, stay safe and let joy find you outside in the sun.

Gallery walls, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara

CATALOG EXCERPT:

SEA CHANGE: a profound or notable transformation, substantial change in perspective, transformation after undergoing various trials or tragedies. 

This body of work emerged after the long months of quarantine. We can all agree that the year 2020 altered the way we see and experience the world, a noticeable change in our work patterns, change in our socializations, change in emotional atmosphere.  

During the long seclusion I spent my time combing through old source material for inspiration. Reexamining photographs, I tried to recall the “aha” moment that captured my attention. Looking more closely at these images I was reminded how much information the camera records verses what our eyes are capable of seeing. I question how this influences my work in the studio, the actual verses the recorded, the recorded verses the perceived, all woven into the personal dialog with my materials.

This work represents healing in the making of marks, solace also comes to mind and growth after a long winter. The uncertainty of this past year is veiled as horizons beckon us forward, the passing clouds offer comfort and respite that the storm is moving on, leaving the glorious remains of being washed clean and full of hope.

SEA CHANGE catalog coming soon!

Palette to Panel

Every day alchemy

details of new work with mixed color on palette

Ode to the Pacific

I’m in the final stretch of creating a new show for Sullivan Goss that will open at the end of July. The weeks are ticking away.

I fell in love with the color charts I was making last year and it has influenced the new paintings. I was looking for light and joy in the confines of the quarantine.

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.

Springtime at the Wildling Museum of Art & Nature

Spring time means new beginnings. A new iteration of the Fox Tales windows arrives at the museum before the re-opening in April. The Wildling opened their doors again April 17th with two new shows and a refresh of the papercuts “wintering” windows. There are cubs at play and new color for daylight hours. STILL, the best viewing times are after dark when there is drama at play.

Wildling Museum of Art & Nature

1511 Mission Drive, Solvang California

Springtime Fox Tale large papercuts

Springtime Fox Tale large papercuts

Springtime Fox Tale large papercuts

Springtime Fox Tale large papercuts

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.

Wintering .... there is beautiful art to be seen.

Winter Salon at Sullivan Goss in Santa Barbara

February Storm Quad, 29.5x78” Oil on Birch panel

Sullivan Goss presents a curated selection of pieces from our inventory and recent acquistions.

February 5th through March 22, 2021 at Sullivan Goss

11 East Anapamu, Santa Barbara

open every day from 10-530

La Paloma Cafe, Santa Barbara, California

Despite the current state of the State of California and the rolling shut downs, a new restaurant has been born, La Paloma Cafe. Words from their own website:

"We welcome you back in time, back in Santa Barbara history, back to La Paloma! After 37 years "the dove" will once again take wing on the iconic corner of Anacapa and Ortega. And like an old friend, the celebrated neon sign will once again state the original letters: La Paloma Cafe. Early in Santa Barbara's history, Ortega Street was "restaurant row" and a hub of activity. Opened in 1938, La Paloma Cafe was the premier Mexican restaurant on the strip and was frequented by stage and screen stars. During Old Spanish Days, vaqueros and cattlemen tied their horses in front of the corner bar building to wet their whistles. The old main house and patio buzzed with energy day and night where locals enjoyed the Luera family's hospitality delivered"

The new owners at Acme Hospitality have given the space a fresh clean face lift and added a second deck for outdoor dining (complete with heat lamps). The interior is spare and beautiful and many of my landscape paintings adorn the walls.

More on the restaurant HERE and to order take out check the MENU.

January Tide 40x40” oil on birch panel

Commission Installation - just in time for the holidays

Pacific Coast Fog 60x36” was recently finished and installed into the home of a happy client. They had been looking for the perfect something for this location and when they found it the painting was just too small. We figured out the perfect size and recallibrated the image for the new dimensions and zhuzhed up the color. Happy holidays from Santa Barbara.

Pacific Coast Fog 60x36”, oil on birch panel ©2020

Bare Limbs Painting at Sundance

Signs of winter are showing today, the trees are dropping the last of their leaves as the wind blows through the emptying branches and big clouds from the passing storm linger in the blue sky.

Bare Limbs Painting 29.5 x 19.5” oil on birch panel at Sundance

Bare Limbs painting now at Sundance

Warblers in the garden and shop

I sure enjoy watching the birds in my garden but I have no claim on being someone who can accurately identify the different species. We do have a pair of what I’m saying are warblers in our Grevillea shrub in our front garden. When I search online it seems they are Orange Crowned Warblers, although I have not actually seen the crown. These little guys like to hang out deep inside the shrub and only on occasion pop into view. Still, I’m in love with their twittering sound and their flitting nature.

Three new bitty gouache paintings are added to the shop today.

Grevillea & Warbler, Gouache on Arches Board, 1.75 x 2.25”

Gouache now in my online shop! →

If you haven’t seen yet, Sundance Online has new collections of my work that went live on their website this month. I have been a regular with them since being featured on the cover in the summer of 2004. Sundance has represented my oil paintings for 16 years and this month they are showcasing two collections of framed gouache paintings. One grouping is a set of miniature paintings depicting pronghorn antelope inspired from a visit to Antelope Valley during the spring poppy bloom. The second is a selection from a series of ocean and sky images.

Wee Bun, California Cottontail, 1.75 x 2.25” Gouache on Arches Board

With the pandemic and our required confinement to home I find my solace at the drafting table creating small portraits in gouache of the local wildlife, mining from images that I have taken from past trips out in the world when the world was a safer place to roam.

As the days and months roll by (or creep or seep, like molasses) I find that my collection is becoming pile after pile of paintings that are taking over my work space. I’ve decided to release them into the world that they my find homes and bring the kind of comfort (and JOY!) that they offered me while making them.

I will be posting new images each week. There are nine new on offer today!

SPRING SHOWS

Lotus 30x30”

“Lotus” will be included in the opening tomorrow night at Sullivan Goss “Masterworks” a group of gallery represented artists through June 23rd, 2019

AND

Winter Light 10x10”

Winter Light will be included in the exhibit opening next week at the Bakersfield Museum of Art. “The Sublime” is part of the 2019 Visual Arts Festival running through August 2019.

THE RIVER'S JOURNEY: REVISITED

White Rock at start of the Rey Fire, 2016 2.5x7” Gouache on Arches Board

There is still time to see The River’s Journey in the city of Santa Barbara in our historical City Hall.

This show is a smaller version of the Rose Compass exhibit hosted by the Wildling Museum last Winter.

On First Thursday, March 7 from 5-7pm there will be one last reception to celebrate this leg of our four venue exhbition. You can also see the last iteration of the show at Westmont Ridley Tree Museum on the Westmont campus in Montecito. That exhibit will remain on view until mid June of this year.

Check out the website and stories of the journey at rosecompass.com.

There is also a wonderful exhibition catalog that goes with the show. Find a copy in the shop or at a local bookstore.