By Invitation Only: Revealing the Landscape

By Invitation Only: Revealing the Landscape

Meet the artists during a festive reception, Sunday August 10, 2-4:30. Parking available. 

Every summer the Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art presents its annual summer landscape exhibition. This year’s exhibition, By Invitation Only: Revealing the Landscape, opening August 10^th, marks the 24^th summer the tradition continues.

On view will be more than 80 works of art, including paintings, drawings, photography and sculpture, by 29 artists. Artists selected are Warren Dreher, Willard Dixon, Jessica Dunne, Stephen Joseph, Catherine Mackey, Heidi McDowell, Teresa Onoda, Anne Subercaseaux and approximately 20 more representing the impressive variety and range of landscape artists. 

These artists paint in plein-air in the natural landscape, sketch in urban locations, sculpt in studios and photograph on mountaintops and in their neighborhoods. Depicting the landscape is a genre that is centuries old, but these artists have found fresh new visions of the environment in which they live and work. Warren Dreher’s work which draws on his influence from Edgar Degas to Edward Hopper and the California Impressionists to the Bay Area Abstract Expressionists, capture quiet moments through his “quick strokes, immediacy of color and above all, his description of light”. Catherine Mackey’s work portrays the relationship between humans and the urban landscape which results in beautiful depictions of emptiness and decay. Her work is comprised of layers of paint, stencil, collage and several different panels which are assembled as one work of art. Teresa Onoda, who received her BA in fine art from Creighton University and studied with Pam Glover, is a plein-air painter whose boldly colored landscapes and powerful brush strokes evoke the grandeur of the “endangered landscapes” of Northern California.     

Artists exhibited:

Chris Adessa, Sharron Antholt, Randy Beckelheimer, Martha Borge, Nicholas Coley, Christin Coy, Willard Dixon, Warren Dreher, Jessica Dunne, Stephen Joseph, Louis LaBrie, Richard Lindenberg, Peter Loftus, Catherine Mackey, Heidi McDowell, Jack Mendenhall, Teresa Onoda, Sandy Ostrau, Carol Peek, Robin Purcell, Roy Schmaltz, Randy Sexton, Linda Simmel, Tracey Snelling, Anne Subercaseaux, Tom Taneyhill, Bryan Mark Taylor, Donna J. Wan, Wanda Westberg

ARMISTEAD GALLERY

August 10 – December 7, 2014

The Native American Collection of Roger Epperson

In 2012, the Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art displayed part of Roger Epperson’s (d. 2008) collection in an exhibition entitled The Nature of Collecting: The Early 20^th Century Fine Art Collection of Roger Epperson. This new exhibition, The Native American Collection of Roger Epperson, presents additional works from Epperson’s collection not yet exhibited. On view will be over 30 works including photography, etchings, drawings and paintings by esteemed artists Edward S. Curtis, Maynard Dixon, Roi Partridge, Edward Borein and Arthur William Hall. Epperson was an East Bay Regional Parks Ranger for over thirty years who had a passion for California’s environment and a deep love of art. Epperson’s collecting endeavors began over twenty five years ago when he saw an exhibition at the Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art (formerly the Hearst Art Gallery) entitled The Color Wood Cut in America 1895-1945. A self-taught collector of early California landscapes as well as Native American Art, Epperson scoured auction houses, antique stores, garage sales, galleries and the internet to accumulate an impressive collection of hundreds of works. An active environmentalist, Epperson shared the same view, awe and respect of nature as the artists who depicted it in his collection. With a ridge named in his honor located in Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, the Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art will pay tribute yet again to Epperson and his collection in this exhibition.

LOCKETT GALLERY 

August 10 – September 14, 2014

The Collector’s Eye: Early California Landscapes and Still Lifes   

It is human nature to collect. We begin as small children picking up pretty stones that we keep in a treasure box, and we never really stop. As we grow and learn more about the world and cultures around us, we become increasingly more sophisticated and more selective, eventually surrounding ourselves with objects to which we feel some special connection.

This exhibit centers around collectors of art. Each of them has a story to tell—what drew them to collecting, why they focused on particular themes, artists or time periods, and how they acquired these particular pieces. They certainly share a common interest—early California landscapes and still lifes. Fortunately, the three collectors featured in this exhibition, Charlene Harvey, George Marchand and John Thurau, are willing to share a few of their special treasures with us—some of which have never been exhibited before. By studying what each has chosen, we have the unique opportunity to get a glimpse into the mind and eye of the collector.

KEITH GALLERY

Big Keiths: Golden State Grandeur, William Keith Gallery

Saint Mary’s College has long been a leading research institution and repository for California’s great 19th century landscape painter, William Keith (1838-1911). From the grand mountain scenes of his early work to the later sublime paintings of calm oak-laden pastorals, William Keith remains one of California’s major painters more than 100 years after his death. Keith had a deep and enduring love of nature, yet his stylistic path was complex. Moving away from the carefully rendered realism of his 1870s paintings, which were influenced by his friend John Muir’s admonishments to reproduce the landscape with scientific accuracy, Keith’s style gradually became looser in brushstroke and more somber and moody. 

The appetite for huge paintings of the epic California landscapes was a perfect fit for Keith's talents and experience. He spent decades trekking through the California wilderness, documenting these scenic sites, sometimes doing so with his close friend, John Muir. Through decades of friendship Muir and Keith rejoiced in the spectacular and pristine beauty of California's Sierra Nevada, the Range of Light. Through the 1870s, Keith sketched extensively in Yosemite. With glowing newspaper reviews, his paintings sold well.  Keith had established his reputation as a painter of grand panoramic landscapes, often of the High Sierra range.