Something’s Brewing 14x14” Oil on birch panel ©2023
The wait is nearly over, the paintings are ready to travel to the gallery in downtown Santa Barbara. They are making quite the racket in the studio, ready to leave the nest. The are dressed, raring to go and looking forward to their debut on the gallery walls.
Sullivan Goss will be sending out a preview THIS Friday, July 20. Click the link below to be added!
Radiant Heat 20x40” Oil on birch panel ©2023
As with my 2021 exhibition SEA CHANGE, my current exhibit, SURFACING, will have a catalog to accompany the show. The layout is complete and the cover decided. I hope to have it ready by the middle of August if not sooner! It will be a beautiful companion to the first catalog, a match set, warm and cool, made up of the same subject, shore and sky, sand and sea. SURFACING will officially open at Sullivan Goss, 11 East Anapamu, Santa Barbara on Friday, July 28, 2023 with the reception on First Thursday, August 3rd from 5-8pm. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the gallery.
New Catalog Cover
“SURF: Once again, I am deeply engrossed in my longstanding relationship with the shoreline, entranced by the interplay of sand, sea, and sky. My newest collection of paintings seamlessly continues the narrative established in my previous exhibition, "Sea Change," delving further into the exploration of color and composition, with an emphasis on the delicate balance between truth and memory.” (catalog excerpt)
Inside Catalog Page
As many of you have guessed, from the image campaign on instagram/facebook, I have a show opening at Sullivan Goss in a few weeks. I’m busy in the studio getting the last of the paintings done and starting to turn my attention to letting people know that the work will be on the walls in August and September here in Santa Barbara. The reception will be during First Thursday openings August 3rd from 5-8 pm. The show officially opens on the Friday before, July 28th, 2023. It will feel good to emerge from the studio, see everyone and share what I’m working on.
Waiting Offshore 10x30” Oil on cradled panel ©2023
The River’s Journey group Rose Compass: (artists left to right) Pamela Zwehl-Burke, Connie Connally, Nicole Strasburg, Nina Warner, Holli Harmon and Libby Smith
Bradbury Dam, 2016, original gouache by Nicole Strasburg
The River’s Journey celebration continues! Not only is the exhibition having an anniversary so is the catalog. Here is a sneak peek into the 120 page catalog from the exhibit that opened at the Wildling Museum of Art & Nature in February of 2018. (You can flip through the entire catalog on my instagram feed). This gem showcased articles from many voices in the community in addition to the six artists participating in the show. You can find it in my shop as well as at the Wildling Museum store. Stayed tuned for information about a reunion exhibit coming soon!
Artists on site at Jameson Lake November 2016
Into the West, 22x60”, oil on panel
Is it possible? Five years ago this month the Wildling Museum in Solvang, California celebrated the opening of the exhibition The River’s Journey. The show focused on the 92-mile long Santa Ynez River watershed. Six artists spent over a year translating the largess of Santa Barbara County’s water source into small intimate gouache paintings (and a few large oils!).
The artists, myself, Holli Harmon, Nina Warner, Connie Connelly, Libby Smith and Pamela Zwehl-Burke, embarked on this project in August of 2016 working steadily through drought and rainy seasons leading up to the exhibit. A catalog was created to document the project and three further venues in the city of Santa Barbara followed the success at the Wildling.
I’m still in awe of the trajectory of the exhibit and the wonderful experience of sharing the journey through these images, for more than a year, in four locations. What a ride! Thanks to the Wildling Musueum, Santa Barbara City Hall Gallery, Sullivan Goss and The Ridley-Tree Museum of Art for hosting this project.
Thank you to the artists who came along for the ride and made gorgeous paintings honoring the river. We appreciate the contributors who wrote essays for the beautiful catalog designed by Leslie Lewis Sigler. I’m still smiling and in awe five years later.
*catalogs can still be found through the Wildling and in my online shop.
Excerpt from The River’s Journey website/blog
Do I have to? It was another doozy full of highs, lows sprinkled with chaotic activity. By the time I make it to the winter holidays I’m usually ready for hibernation and a long winter nap. It sounds so good, right? Friends in snowy places, like Canada and New Hampshire (you know who you are) have the perfect excuse to pull in the welcome mat, settle down by the fire with a stack of books and wait for the spring. Okay, maybe some winter activities are included but those are always optional.
Looking at my photo collection from 2022 the year both started and ended at the beach with plenty of visits to the seashore in between. My solace, my comfort has been found at the edge of the pacific. Joy and laughter with my husband and dog are created and felt there as well. It’s a meeting place with friends and where I run for time alone. It is a steady, unwavering presence that impacts who I get to be while traveling in this skin. I have the great pleasure of sharing these experiences from the inside out through my chosen work. In that knowledge I feel blessed every day. Considering the past few years of uncertainty and quarantine, without close connection to routines and the familiar patterns of day to day existence, my relationship to the sea and sky never wavers. My love for the pacific stays true.
Looking back or looking forward there will always be the sea, the sky, color, light, friends and fur balls. With love, I wish you all a wonder-full start to the new year.
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!
It's October, the start to the last quarter of the year, the beginning of the end of 2022. It's a month that heralds the start of holiday fever and a ramping up to the new year looming. New work is emerging from the studio and finding new homes as well as annual exhibits. Here are just a few to check in with this coming season.
CREATIVE WOMEN III - GALLERY MAR CARMEL
OCT 21 through NOV 11, 2022
New Work by Twelve Regional Female Artists
Opening Reception Friday, October 21st, from 5 to 8pm.
Four new paintings will be showing alongside the works of 11 other artists in
this juried group exhibition celebrating women of the central coast.
More information can be found on their WEBSITE
VALLEY GOLD , 36x60” Oil on birch panel
SUNDANCE Home Catalog and SUNDANCE online have a new collection of paintings on offer. Thank you Sundance for the amazing environments that showcase my work.
See the collection HERE
LA PALOMA Restaurant in Santa Barbara has been open now for a couple years, making it through the toughest stretch of Covid quarrantine. This beautiful space has showcased seven of my paintings from the day it opened. I am honored to part of the gorgeous surroundings. Go have a drink, share a meal and visit the now permanent collection of work in this one of kind Santa Barbara establishment. Check out the MENU and make a plan to stop in.
Plane, bus, plane, van, horse, helicopter, raft, speed boat, van, bus, plane. It seemed almost every mode of transportation in the short span of 6 days getting to the Grand Canyon and back again. We missed trains and motorcycles, hot air balloon? Each mode of transportation offered a new perspective of the classic western landscape. Scale. The vast quantity of the open western landscape, immensity of space, but also uninhabitable space and the evidence of the drought that continues to be ever present.
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 Solstice marks the first day of of the new season, the season of blue skies, heat, and running to the shoreline, lake or mountain tops to cool from the radiating summer sun. Sundance has a new collection of paintings celebrating the season, big sky and cool ocean colors or mountain pines with night skies.
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
A warm thank you to Sundance for showcasing 16 new paintings online. Represented are paintings from seashore to mountain top, estuary birds and cloud filled skies.
Wild Pines, 12x48” Oil on Birch Panel
My show concluded at the end of September of this year and what an amazing show. I felt like I ran a marathon at a sprint putting together the 54 pieces that were delivered to the gallery in July.
By the end of the show all the gas had been consumed from my tank. My normal pattern would be to celebrate by traveling somewhere and filling my eyes and heart back up before returning to the studio. Alas, it has been another grounded year.
Life continues and despite being home there are shows still on the horizon. Right now at Sullivan Goss you can find my work in both the annual 100 GRAND exhibition as well as the Winter Salon.
Sky Sea 40, 4x4”, Gouache on Arches Board - 100 GRAND Exhibition at Sullivan Goss Santa Barbara
I hope the season finds you all well and thriving. May your creativity find you hard at work. Happy Holy Days.
Campus Tide 5, 28x40”, oil on cradled birch panel - Winter Salon, Sullivan Goss
NEWS FROM THE STUDIO OF NICOLE STRASBURG
May the change of the seasons find you well and thriving. There are just 5 days left to experience SEA CHANGE at Sullivan Goss in downtown Santa Barbara. The show will close on Monday, September 27th. Thank you to all the visitors who have reached out, letting me know you enjoyed the show. HUGE gratitude to clients taking work home, both to add to their collections and start new ones.
I want to thank Marilyn McMahon at the Santa Barbara Newspress for the spectacular spread in the Life section on Saturday, September 18th. Thanks also, to Kit Boise-Cossart for the wonderful studio interview in LUM Magazine. There is a catalog that accompanies the exhibit which is available both at the gallery and online HERE.
Fall means cooler weather, shorter days and often times, color! Leaves changing, clear crisp days and (fingers crossed) rain in the forecast. Honoring the change of season SUNDANCE has twelve new paintings celebrating the fall, plus a few others to choose from.
Fall Willow Tunnel, 10x30”, oil on birch
Recently opened in the main gallery at Sullivan Goss is PAPER TRAIL: The Life Story of Great Works of Art. This is an exhibition focusing on the significance of how art moves through the world and across time. My Overpass Series No. 5, a reductive wood block print created at the Atelier of Richard Tullis, can be found in this exhibit. It is a large print inspired by the San Francisco freeway system. This print traveled in 2015 with the exhibit titled California Dreaming through the Oceanside Museum of Art, Riverside Museum of Art and the Palazzo della Provincia di Frozinone before landing on the walls at Sullivan Goss. Exhibition runs through October 27, 2021.
Overpass Series No. 5, 30x30.5”, reductive woodblock monoprint
There is only one week left to view SEA CHANGE at Sullivan Goss in downtown Santa Barbara. Yesterday this wonderful article appeared in our local paper the Santa Barbara Newspress. Thank you to writer Marilyn McMahon for making that happen. I’m hugely honored to be featured.
Santa Barbara Newspress, LIFE section, September 18, 2021
Author Marilyn McMahon
Fourteen new original paintings were just added to the collection online. See them all HERE!
Once in a Blue Moon (left) Milky Way & Pines, 12x12” oil on birch panel
Badwater, Death Valley by Nicole Strasburg 29.5 x 58.5” Oil on cradled birch panel.
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.
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!