Holiday exhibition
December 10 through February 6, 2022
Celebrate the holidays with beautiful and engaging art by our gallery artists — art that transforms our perception of the natural world surrounding us.
It can’t be said often enough how lucky we are to live on California’s Central Coast. I have the additional blessing of being immersed in art that influences and enhances how I observe our idyll between mountains and ocean.
When I stop to take in a view while out walking, I contemplate the potential painting, drawing, or photograph in front of me. Details of a spectacular tree remind me of intricate renderings by Ann Lofquist or Susan Petty. The trees’ bold trunks and branches conjure a few deft strokes by Marilyn Turtz in oil. Reflections in a creek dissolve into Marcia Burtt's blurred brushstrokes mirroring the plants and sky. And looking through the murky water I see Marilee Krause's watercolor washes mingling with poetic lines.
Recent fog transported me inside the texture and color of Michael Ferguson’s and Randall David Tipton’s atmospheric worlds of the northwest on canvas and paper. I was reminded of the diffuse color in Robert Abbott’s oils of Rincon farms. Walking from an overcast block to sunshine breaking through in the next, I entered one of Patricia Doyle’s time-lapse paintings of an evolving acrylic landscape.
Biking up Gibraltar, the quiet ascent takes on the hyperreality of Erling Sjovold's backcountry plein air surveys. Looking down from Camino Cielo, the coastal plain below transforms itself into the patterns of a Bill Dewey aerial photograph. On my descent, light and shadow transport me to Ian Roberts’ paths and roads, leading me into one of Jeff Yeomans' painterly snapshots of Southern California.
Even tending my garden has been magnified by Anne Ward’s botanical patterns and Dana Hooper’s lush observations of domesticated farm life. A daily walk — a daily reminder of how nature influences our artists as well as how living with and appreciating art transforms us.
— Cynthia Stahl