Home
Gualala Arts
Promoting public interest and participation in the arts since 1961.
Archive of past events: 2004 through 2014
Artists of Humboldt County
Reception: Friday, September 9, 2011 at 5:00 p.m.
Artists of Humboldt County will be showing at Gualala Arts Center from their opening Friday, September 9 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. through Sunday, October 2, 2011. These award winning artists will be showing stunning landscapes plus other personal expressions in two and three dimensional works of art.
About Stock Schlueter
About Rachel K. Schlueter
When I choose an image to paint, it's from a sense of connection that spurs feeling into cognitive action. The portrait is my favorite subject for triggering this process. Intuition and imagination has been key in my personal and professional life, it's a sense that has been present from my earliest memories, and most significantly represented in my paintings.
About Peter Zambas
For me, the painting process is about learning to see, and exploring the relationships that create space, light and gesture. Whether it is a still life, a landscape, or a figure, I am drawn to capturing the space and energy created around the objects, while sharing my perspective through composition, and expressing my energy with the abstract application of paint on the canvas.
I love exploring the world for light and form, beauty and composition. I love the feeling of paint flowing from my brush. I love the moment of recognition when I've captured some visual, emotional, or energetic truth in a painting, and I love to share that moment.
About Jim McVicker
About Theresa Oates
Theresa has shown through Northern California and was selected as Judges Choice in the San Francisco Chronicle Fine Lines National Juried Competition. Her whimsical style of impressionism blends emotion with realism.
About Kathy O'Leary
About John King
Life could have crawled out of the dark muck and evolved into the many different forms of life now around us. Or perhaps it was brought down from space in the suitcase of a merchant traveling between different worlds. The atoms that make up everything in the universe came from the surrounding stars that blew away fragments and dust that swirled into planet forming eddies. The wonderful thing is that everything in our existence, from rocks to plants are make up of the same type of atoms, they are just arranged in different ways. I like this view of the universe. It is what I think about while I am working on art.
About Regina Case
About Linda Wise
About John Crater
John is new to the Northern California scene. He spent most of his life in Alaska. He is also somewhat new to painting. He retired early from his "Real Job" five years ago and set out to do a thousand paintings just to see if he wanted to be a painter. He reached his goal in less than four years and is well on his way to two thousand.
DogboneAs a special treat for the opening of the Artists of Humboldt County exhibit, the Eureka hometown band Dogbone will be playing. John King, who plays guitar and vocals with the group, is also showing in the exhibit.
John King is a sculptor artist and self-taught guitarist from Los Angeles, exploring new compositions regularly. Both Jonny and Timmy Claasen are from Humboldt County and have played in a diverse number of groups, from the early Commotions and Mason Dixon to the Merve George band, Earl Thomas Band and others. For 20 years Gregg Moore has been an avid student of all the forms brass band music has developed in around the world. He was responsible for the first visit to Europe of a representative of the exciting culture of Indian brass bands and has participated in conferences where he has shared his experiences with approaching European band musicians with the brass band cultures of the world. Having a long history with music and performance has given these musicians the freedom to play in many styles and to explore with intensity the strange notes or innovative journeys that happen Dogbone's way.
Members: Eliot Claasen trumpet / John King guitar and vocals / Jon Claasen drums and vocals / Timmy Claasen bass and vocals / Gregg Moore on horns.
The Gualala Arts Center, located at 46501 Old State Highway in Gualala, CA, Join us in celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Gualala Arts, 1961 - 2011
Serving the coastal communities of northern Sonoma & southern Mendocino Counties.
|
An artist statement changes as it should as the artist ages. Like many young artists I set out to get rich, famous, and change the world all at once. Each painting was a new masterpiece bound to skyrocket me to stardom. The artist personality is often a balancing act of ego and humility. Too much ego and they will never learn anything. Not enough ego and they would not have enough confidence to get started. Talent is of course needed, but often it is overrated. It is the desire and the discipline that over the long haul that build the foundation that allows the artist to create a body of serious work. I could get all philosophical about the deeper meaning of Art. But, after so many years of painting it is enough to just paint. The work becomes a byproduct of a way of life. Observation and the act of painting are their own statement. Creating something of beauty and sharing it just might do some good in this world.
My paintings manifest from a desire to experience spontaneous creativity while connecting with worlds seen and unseen. I work from images found and personal photos. The process of picking an image, painting it and naming it is a total experience. I do not think as much as act on impulse when I begin however, I do have a method for getting results. The melding of abstract gesture with representational form allows for a personal expression to emerge as genuine. This process induces a state of acute awareness from which I become inspired and productive as an artist.
My current work is representational oil paintings on linen and panel. I paint mostly from life, with the occasional studio landscape or portrait from a photo.
What is it that makes a McVicker painting distinctive? There's the amazing brushwork, the tapestry of pure, unmixed strokes. There's the underplay, or risk of garishness, but McVicker manages to preserve. There's the atmosphere, even in a still life, the air in the room is somehow there, and in his landscapes the air is a vital presence. But probably the main thing is the light: the whole scene is lit up in a convincing, embracing light that feels perfectly right, and pulls the viewer into the scene.
Painting beauty is the theme of all my work. My subject matter covers still life, the figure, and landscape. However, I am currently focused on the landscape and the natural beauty of California. I take several trips a year throughout the state gathering resource material - photographs and field studies. I work exclusively in oil, en plein air, and on large studio pieces from my field studies and my digital photography. My work is available in several California galleries, on line, and in regional and national exhibitions.
I paint what's around me every day; the cup of coffee, animals, river. They are intensely personal paintings with subjects I paint again and again. By using unlikely combinations of elements or points of view, the images are shifted beyond everyday reality, investing them with heightened significance. Nature is pulled inside, and rooms are opened to it. A cup of coffee in a daybreak living room and leaves blowing upriver in warm summer wind are interwoven; all things that carry the mind home, bringing life into quiet kitchens.
I am a manager for a garbage company in Eureka, California. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of waste humans generate. Objects seem to lose their usefulness so quickly in our society. But many things are still useful. The reality of waste is that there really is no such thing as waste. Most items that are discarded still have usefulness. Today waste is used as a raw resource that can be transformed into building materials, playground mats, new containers, compost, energy and in my case, ART! When I go to the dump, I don't see waste. I see the potential for sculptured deer, cows, goats, warrior women, benches and gates. I let the objects that I find give me direction to what forms my sculptures will take, some abstract, some functional, some serious and some are whimsical. I am an artist who is moving from an emerging to a mid-career level. I have been shown in both solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries located in northern California including the Morris Graves Museum, Kronos Fine Art Gallery and the C Street Hall Gallery. My work has been recognized by art critics and received many awards in professionally juried shows.
Dogbone has been together for twelve years, playing original compositions with creative innovation. Feral jazzrock is a category that fits Dogbone's style. They send wild, unleashed soundwaves through the mind, down seldom used neural pathways directly from the badlands of creativity.