Gualala Arts Promoting public interest and participation in the arts since 1961
About Nancy Burres
Nancy Burres has been a painter almost her entire life: she remembers getting a complete oil painting kit when she was 12 years old—and she still has the wooden box it came in. She also remembers her family taking her to a local art exhibit of Robert Wood’s paintings, which only increased her commitment to drawing and to art. At Burbank High, Burres took all the art classes available and then took college art classes through Santa Rosa Adult Education and at the Mendocino Art Center over decades.
While classes certainly help artists to “learn the basics,” Burres says that at some point an artist simply needs to keep painting, keep experimenting, until “you get it just right.” Burres has been getting it just right for a long time, showing her work in galleries in Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties. Her work is displayed in the Dolphin Gallery and in the Mendocino Country Store. “I love painting with oil,” Burres says, adding that she also creates abstract 
images using acrylic: she chooses the medium that best suits her subject matter.
Burres notes that she especially “loves landscapes: when I look at a beautiful scene it gives me a sense of harmony and serenity,” which she then captures in her paintings. Her many paintings of redwoods, sunsets, high mountain wildflowers, water scenes, and old falling-down cabins show her attachment to the natural world. Her ultimate goal, she says, “is to create artworks of beauty and peace that nourish the viewer on a spiritual level.”
Burres’s enthusiasm for and devotion to her craft are palpable: everywhere she goes she notices scenes she would love to paint, so much so that she says she “can hardly wait to get home to begin painting.” Go to https://nancyburres.weebly.com/abstract-paintings.html to see additional examples of Burres’s memorable paintings, and plan to join the artist for the show’s opening reception on September 1st.