Through the use of a palate knife and a variety of brushes, Cyndra Bradford creates color harmony with “colorful muds” and thus recreates the beauty of the natural landscape in both an impressionistic and expressionist style. Her plein air technique effectively captures the energy of the challenging elements and changing light and her equestrian paintings brim with life and movement.

Cyndra Bradford grew up in Big Sur and both of her parents are noted artists. Growing up “under the easel” she and her five siblings had as much paper and art supplies they could use. Her father, Howard Bradford, taught her the craft of serigraphs and by the age of 18 she had dealers throughout the USA.

In 1990, she opened Galerie Plein-air in Carmel to promote a group of artists known as the informalists.

Robert R. Bradshaw was born in Midland Michigan in 1930. He graduated from the Chicago Art Institute and attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago. After finishing his studies, he worked briefly for an art studio before enlisting in the Navy, ending up in the Korean War. After that and a 15 year career at an interior design firm in Boston, MA, he settled in San Francisco where he opened a home furnishings store. After selling the business in 1985, Robert moved to Carmel and belonged to the Carmel Art Association for 8 years then in 2003 moved to Palm Springs where he currently resides and works from his home studio He has been represented by J. Howell Fine Art since 2004 and in Palm Springs by The Interior Designer Accoutrements, is a member of the Artist Council of the Palm Springs Art Museum and has won numerous awards from the city of Palm Springs as well as the Palm Springs Art Museum.

“I didn’t want to do watercolors, I didn’t want to do oils, I didn’t want to do any straight discipline.” Bradshaw’s work is unique and the technique consists of applying layers of colored acrylic inks to illustration board, which has been sanded and distressed then working from dark to light. Having inked the board to an almost black color, he then draws up the image and begins removing the black using the same ink, but with a brush and picking up the old ink with a paper napkin. The process reveals colors and texture around and to the image resulting in a rich residue left in the tooth of the board. The final process entails adding layers of clear and opaque acrylic ink washes and the either oil or prismacolor pencils for fine details.

Vesna’s early career included teaching art in Southern California at the high school level and later creating and running her own gallery, Wild Blue, for twelve years in West Los Angeles. After her move to Northern California, she became a founding member of the Healdsburg Center for the Arts, where she exhibited and curated shows for 15 years as well as serving on the board of directors.

As an artist, she works in several media, painting, ceramics and jewelry. In her early thirties, she discovered Memphis Milan furniture from Italy and their playful approach to form and color became an inspiration. She exhibited nationally through galleries and the ACC shows and her furniture sequed into interior design.

She has lived in Healdsburg for over 28 years and being surrounded by natural beauty has inspired her in a new way. Becoming intrigued with trees, leaves and branches, their shape, color and texture, Vesna experimented with several media to create her own interpretation of leaves. This current combination of materials allows her to work intuitively and the design is guided by organic materials. Willow branches have become the backbone of her new work and bronze wire plays within this constraint. The parchment fills the void within the lines with texture and the shellac tightens the parchment adding color and transparency.

The climate crisis, migrations of thousands of refugees escaping war and famine and the evacuations caused by floods and local fires have inspired this “Groundless Series”. A simple arching boat shape is filled with bundled belongings, the few precious and necessary objects to continue life elsewhere…..life’s basic needs.

The boat is a human creation, resilient in the face of obstacles and a symbol of hope.

Robin Burgert is a Sonoma County artist who paints and sculpts. She received her BFA degree from Sonoma State University.

“When asked why or what I was thinking when creating a painting or a piece of sculpture, I usually wonder myself. What is the pull I feel to create? It’s not something I can easily put into words.

Before starting a piece, I close my eyes and feel a spot in my solar plexus. From there, I choose materials, color, brushes, palate knives, whatever feels right.

When a piece is complete, that same place in my chest feels done.

If a viewer is touched in that same spot, I feel as though we’ve spoken without words.”

Laurent Davidson was born in New York City, then moved with his family in 1953 at the age of 4 to the Loire Valley in France. There he lived and was educated for the next twenty years. The grandson of internationally distinguished portrait sculptor Jo Davidson, Laurent attended the Beaux Arts school in Tours, France prior to working in lithography printing and art conservation and restoration.

He first experimented with “Mobiles” at the age of thirteen when living in Saché, France next door to Alexander Calder, the world renowned artist who developed and popularized the unique art of Mobile making. Calder’s daughter married Laurent’s uncle and they all lived in the same village of Saché.

It was the study of music and chromatic harmony that initiated a renewed interest in Mobile making. Made of elemental shapes composed in rhythms and colors, set on a point or suspended in the air, Mobiles can be considered to be part of the wind instrument family. Exploring their similarity to musical scales or phrases, Laurent aspires to convey the relationship between the visual arts and music. Mobiles floating in space and time can be interpreted as “harmonic progressions” and their movement as “variations.”

Working with aluminum and steel, Laurent creates Mobiles and StabiloMobiles for interiors as well as for outdoors. Each sculpture is painted with Japan Colors, an oil base paint that dries to a flat finish so that the colors are visible from all angles. His large outdoor installations are made of heavy gauge metals and painted with durable weather-resistant paints.

Laurent has shown his paintings and sculptures at one man and group shows in Carmel, Big Sur and Laguna Beach, California, Scottsdale, Arizona, Seattle, Washington, Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the International Art Fair in Paris (FIAC) and at his family’s gallery in Tours, France.

Laurent lives in Carmel, California on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula. He lives there with his wife Diana, the long-time owner of the Highlands Sculpture Gallery in Carmel.

Artist Statement

“Much of my work examines the innate beauty of nature versus the cosmic intervention of people. My cultural sense is grounded in that every object has a meaningfulness or spirit. Every rock, every tree, every element contributes to our connection to this world and keeps us rooted to an ancestral past. With the small figures, I am interested in their talismanic aspect and iconic relationship with the world at large. They can symbolize the preciousness, wonder or intimacy that is set aside and lost from our everyday adult life. The portrait busts are more inclined to a broader narrative and symbolic interpretation. The meaning of faith, belief, fortune, chance and life’s ironies weave in and out. This adds a sense of mystery and innate connection to the multicultural landscape of the human figure.

In 2004, I graduated with a B.F.A. in Traditional Arts. My main emphasis was in ceramics and printmaking. I continued to work at the university as an adjunct faculty/lab technician gaining invaluable experiences with making glazes and firing kilns.

Born in the middle of the United States, I am half Japanese and half Cajun. My mother was half a continent and an ocean away from her rising sun. My father was in the army and stationed everywhere except his home state of Louisiana. My influences come form this mixture of East meets West. Sinto and Roman Catholic. Japanese spirits and bayou ghosts. Teacups and chalices. Tied together with joyous humor and quiet rituals.”

Frieda sometimes begins by drawing in India ink, and sometimes introduces it later, but it is always essential to her painting process. She feels that initial line work gives her movement and flow to establish the mood. When she saves it until later, it provides definition fo the forms and patterns already contributed by her work with watercolor paint. Either way, she sees line as expressive and when combined with the excitement and immediacy of watercolor, gives a personal and emotional response to the living things that inspire her. She favors a small sheet of paper so as to retain the intimate quality of her perceptions, which come about through glimpses of a garden or wild flowers growing alongside the roadside in Ashland, Oregon, where she resides. Out of them evolve lyrical paintings, where imagination replaces literal observations. Forms capturing the essence of her material dance about on her paper, darting and fluttering. Her delicacy is neither static nor effete; one sense a celebration of life in her modestly scaled work.

Frieda is a graduate of Albright Art School, University of Buffalo, New York and attended Columbia University, NY and the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the recipient of numerous awards and is included in the book Watercolor Bold and Free by Lawrence Goldsmith and is the author illustrator to two textbooks, Watercolor Techniques and Color Theory.

Peggy Jelmini’s passion for art and painting was realized early in life when she was awarded with a scholarship to a regional art center as an elementary school student. This was the beginning of her career and her dedication to master the techniques of her chosen field later earned her a summa cum laude degree in art and the dean’s medal for scholarship upon graduation. Her fervor and enthusiasm to find perfection in her chosen field led her to seek and find criticism, instruction, encouragement and praise from some of the most respected names in art.

Peggy’s early professional career started as a critically recognized watercolorist capturing the flora and tranquil landscapes of California’s great Central Valley where she grew up and lives. Her search for expanded venues took her to the East Coast where she studied at the national Gallery of Art and belonged to the Potomac Valley and Virginia Watercolor societies. She has exhibited her work in galleries in Washington D.C., mid-Atlantic Seaboard and California and has won numerous national awards. Her ability to make the ordinary look exraordinary has won her praise from fellow professionals, designers and knowledgeable clients who have addd her paintings to their collections through the world.

Melissa Lofton was born in Carmel, California and is a longtime resident of the Big Sur area. Painting between landscapes, born out of her love for the natural world and abstract work, a natural expression of inner worlds, Lofton paints large format canvasses in oil, characterized by complex, lively color and texture. She is inspired by the landscape of home in Big Sur: trees, mountains, rocks and sea. She also paints the people and everyday objects in her world and her travels. In recent years, Lofton has become fascinated with the possibility of painting a more subjective inner world: dreams, thoughts, the quality of life.

Lofton maintains a studio at her home in the mountains of Big Sur as well as a studio space in Carmel.

1920-2011

Rip Matteson was born in Oakland, California in 1920. He studied art at San Jose State, California College of Arts and Crafts, University of California, Berkeley, Parsons School of Design and at the Scuola di Belle Arte, Rome. He received his Master of Fine Arts and Doctorate in Education degrees from the University of California Berkeley.

During his life long career as an artist, Rip was awarded numerous awards for his artistic endeavors including the James D. Phelan Award for Achievement in Art and an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Blackburn College for his contribution to the foundation of its art department.

Women have been a favorite subject for artists throughout the ages. To create a fresh approach in a subject so universally depicted is the challenge of any artist. It is not surprising that Rip’s major influences were Amedeo Modigliani, Egon Schiele, Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne and Gustav Klimt. Much like these great masters, Rip was not particularly concerned nor interested in recreating a resemblance, but rather he used his model as a vehicle to express his excitement for line, form, color and expression. His portraits and single figure paintings never failed to capture the spirit and personality of his subject.

In addition to painting, Rip was a renowned cartoonist, published regularly in Playboy and The New Yorker magazines.

His work is in the permanent collections at Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley, Bowles Hall, U.C. Berkeley, Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey, CA, Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, CA, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA and Blackburn College, Carlinville, IL.

“I want my paintings to be spontaneous. Light and color are constantly changing, so I work quickly to capture the moment. However, even the most famous Plein Air painters - Monet and Van Gogh painted in their studio as well. It was their interpretation that set them apart. This is what I strive for.”

A master of shadow and light, anyone looking at a painting by Jeff will get not only a sense of place, but of time. Time of year as well as the hour of the day.

A native of Southern California, Jeff was born with a passion for art, constantly drawing as a child, winning high school art shows, which led him to focus on drawing, painting and art history at El Camino College. Early in his career, Jeff began working for commercial studios specializing in the creation of paintings and murals for commercial spaces and later backdrops for photography and film. A good experience, which allowed him to learn how to paint on a large scale in a wide variety of subjects and styles. In 1994, he visited the Monterey Peninsula and lured by its natural beauty, decided to stay and devote his career to painting full time. He is a member of a group of plein air painters called “the Informalists” along with wife, Cyndra Bradford who owns Gallerie Plein Air in Carmel.

Jan Wagstaff received her formal art training at Oakland’s renowned California College of the Arts where she earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in textiles.

Wagstaff’s imagery derives primarily from Nature, which she renders in oil on canvas. She is especially drawn to marshland grasses, aspen canopies, birds in flight, waterways and reflections. Says Jan, “As I observe the natural world, I am ever conscious of how I am experiencing it, how all of my senses play a part in my perception. My work is about seasons, sounds, texture, movement and shapes. It is about blending colors, subtleties of light and dark and things near and far. About seeing and celebrating the ordinary such that it becomes extraordinary. My paintings are visual entertainment but even more, I hope they encourage viewers to recall places that hold special meaning to them.”