Abstraction with Marble Dust - 1962, 1962
50 x 70 inches | oil and marble dust on canvas
Private Collection
Channing Peake was born in Boulder, Colorado, and moved to California as a child. He received scholarships to both the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, and the Santa Barbara School of Arts. He studied muralism with Diego Rivera in Mexico, followed by studies at the Art Students League of New York. There, he met Rico LeBrun, and through him, worked on murals with Lewis Rubenstein at Harvard and LeBrun on a WPA project for Pennsylvania Station. He returned to Santa Barbara County, where he was based for the rest of his life. There, he worked with Howard Warshaw, among others. He traveled and worked in Mexico, Central America and Europe, and was friends with notable artists Pablo Picasso, Rufino Tamayo, and Francoise Gilot. He died in Santa Barbara, California in 1989. Channing Peake's own work is distinguished by his strong, abstracted shapes and bold use of blacks, red and blues.
With downtown Los Angeles seemingly sprouting a new art museum or gallery district every few months, it can be hard to remember that well before L.A. became a hotbed of art making and collecting, Santa Barbara was known as the most artistic city in the state south of San Francisco. With this new exhibit, Sullivan Goss aims to right that skewed impression and teach us to hold our heads up with pride in Santa Barbara’s profound influence on the art of our time.
COLLECTIONS
California Legion of Honor, San Francisco
De Young Museum, San Francisco
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
Vincent Price Collection
Wright S. Ludington Collection
EXHIBITIONS
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1983, 1985 De la Guerra Gallery, Santa Barbara, California
1978 Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York
1976 Chelsea Galleries, Venice, California
1966 Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon
1963 Willard Gallery, New York, New York
1960, 1953, 1950, 1953, 1960 Frank Perls Art Gallery, Beverly Hills, California
1951, 1954, 1975 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California
1948, 1949 Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, California
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1974 Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California
1961 Knoedler Gallery, Paris, France
1959 Scripps College, La Jolla, California
1958 Carnegie Institute Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
1958 Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington
1957 Jacques Seligman Gallery, New York
1957 M.H. de Young, San Francisco, California
1955 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
