Mr. Zog's Sex Wax is one of the most iconic surfboard wax brands in surfing's history. Here's how it got its unusual name.

Mr. Zog's Sex Wax is a surf company founded in 1972 by Frederick Charles Herzog III and his chemist partner Nate Skinner.

Herzog III was born in 1945 and grew up in Tustin, Oregon, ten miles northeast of Newport Beach and 40 miles southeast of Los Angeles, California.

Many local residents divide their time between Santa Barbara and their second homes in other cities strewn across the continent. As summer turns to fall, they begin to think about returning to the warmer weather and slower pace of life that Santa Barbara offers.

“California on My Mind,” the current exhibition at Sullivan Goss: An American Gallery, calls them to do just that. 

Historic and contemporary paintings, drawings and prints by artists from Southern California highlight the region’s history and mythology.

Early morning, late summer, three painters scout for a coastal painting view. Several locations are considered. One of the painters, Hank Pitcher, chimes in with a smile: “I don’t care where it is so long as there’s water in it.” To beat the sunrise, they choose a pasture close by occupied by several large bulls. 

Water indeed. As a swimmer needs a pool, Hank Pitcher needs an ocean, as evidenced by recent paintings on view at Sullivan Goss Gallery.

Santa Barbara and its environs offer a visual treasure trove of hidden gems. Small spaces of secret beauties, coves of elegance and broad vistas of graceful nature can be found by an inquisitive eye. One man has set these sights onto canvas with great expression. A lifelong resident, painter Hank Pitcher is a true product of his environment. His visual efforts are eloquent in the progression of art history and Plein Air painting.

With such clarity and positivity in short supply, this new volume devoted to the paintings of Hank Pitcher comes as a much-appreciated balm to the spirit. Paging through its 254 richly colorful pages allows one to fathom the range and intensity of Pitcher’s output over a career that stretches without a break from his enrollment at UCSB’s College of Creative Studies in 1967 to the present. Although he’s probably best known for bringing images from surfing into the canon of fine art, this retrospective demonstrates how various his work has been over five decades, and how deeply rooted it is in the unique advantages offered by our region.

Well-known Santa Barbara artist Hank Pitcher likes things simple, whether painting iconic scenes of contemporary California culture and the coastal landscape or describing their back stories.

This message comes across loud and clear in the huge, coffee-table book, titled simply, “Hank Pitcher,” recently published by Sullivan Goss — An American Gallery.

As one of the original students at the College of Creative Studies (CCS), Hank Pitcher (Art '71) was influenced immediately by seminars with visionary scientist Buchminister Fuller and the beginning of a long association with literary critic Marvin Mudrick, the first CCS Provost. Working with distinguished faculty and visitors at CCS is the foundation upon which he has built his own work and on which he credits his success.

Given the phantasmagoric nature of today’s visual entertainments, it’s a wonder that an art gallery can hold our attention. Case in point: the meditative spaces at the Sullivan Goss gallery located on narrow Anapamu Street in Santa Barbara. A quiet inner dialogue in the gallery space shuts outside noises and distractions on our selfie lives.

Hank Pitcher’s solo show, “Primal,” now on view in the central of the three exhibition spaces, presents seductively simple pastel-infused figurative landscapes that become objects of our thankful contemplation. 

On View at Sullivan Goss, An American Gallery through February 2, 2014

Southern California has always been a place for innovation. Yet the bright lights of Hollywood have often obscured the full range of the region’s artistic output. Now, more than a decade into the 21st century, art historians are turning their gaze back to the mid 20th to establish the significant role that Los Angeles artists played in the rise of modernism.

Currently on view at Sullivan Goss are more than 25 works by some of the key players in the L.A. art world from 1940 to the 1980s. Another 16 works will arrive at the gallery in early September.

Tidal Forces, the new show of paintings by Hank Pitcher at Sullivan Goss (7 E. Anapamu St.), offers 30 or so recent images of the Central Coast. Some, like the 2010 “Two Figures and a Wave” or “Beach Volleyball, 7-10” from the same year, seem anecdotal, while others, such as the various pictures of the Gaviota Coast from winter and spring of 2011, appear primarily concerned with the contrasts and echoes of larger earth forms. What knits these disparate approaches together? There’s Pitcher’s skill and sensibility, to be sure—composition and the feel of the brush are in exquisite balance throughout—but there’s also a larger aesthetic context, something that literary critic and historian Paul Fussell dubbed the “American Shore Ode” back in 1962, that’s worth considering, especially as it allows one to make connections between poetry and painting that are too often left vague and obscure.

People often view Santa Barbara as paradise, the California dream — palm-framed vistas, glistening surf, the golden Santa Ynez Mountains, beauty as stunning and transcendent as a rainbow.

“Almost everyone who has been to Santa Barbara understands that there’s something special about it — the quality of light, the Mediterranean climate, the biodiversity, the lifestyle,” says artist Hank Pitcher, who is also a teacher and a surfer. His iconic portraits of surfboards, today’s tribal shields, symbolize California beach culture.