CHRIS PETERS
🔴 At Twilight, 2013
157856
OPENING RECEPTION: 1ST THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2013, FROM 5 - 8PM
Sullivan Goss announces a landmark exhibition of artworks in oil, acrylic, pencil, encaustic, tapestry, collodion photography, and photopolymer etching that explore the ideas and aesthetics of the American Tonalist tradition. Building on an established roster of regional and national artists already working in the tradition that includes Jon Francis, Nicole Strasburg, and Sarah Vedder, as well artists well known to the gallery’s audience like Meredith Brooks Abbott, Joseph Goldyne, and James David Thomas, the gallery hopes to establish itself as a preeminent West Coast champion and source for Tonalist art.
Tonalism is more of a pictorial approach than a particular school. In the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, a variety of artists experimented with a muted palette and/or with capturing dreamy, atmospheric scenes at dawn, dusk, or in moonlight. Their art was deeply romantic, mysterious, and subjective. They were poets in paint. Many consider their interest in subjectivity and painterly abstraction to be an important antecedent to Modernist abstraction.
The artists in TONALISM NOW depart from this tradition to create contemporary works in new and traditional media. Among these, Wolf Kahn, April Gornik, and Terry DeLapp have achieved the widest reputations in what has sometimes been called “NeoTonalism.” Although Kahn and DeLapp have brighter palettes than their forebears, their interest in “glow” and in poetic suggestion ally them. Gornik traditionally makes sublime Tonal works in paint, pencil and print form, but in this exhibition, she will be represented by a jacquard tapestry.
Jon Francis, Nicole Strasburg, and Sarah Vedder are all long veterans to both the gallery and to Tonalist practice. Each approaches Tonalism from a different vantage point. Francis chases the golden glow of Old California. Vedder and Strasburg are both sensitive colorists with a strong interest in abstraction who arrive at very different styles.
The gallery’s sustained interest in the careers of certain artists with Tonalist leanings should not be a surprise. Nevertheless, audiences may be surprised to see solidly Tonal works by Meredith Brooks Abbott and Chris Peters. Imports of far away artists like Betsy Eby, Ben Bauer, and David Skinner will also add to the sense of discovery. Long time Santa Barbarans will not be surprised by the inclusion of Bjorn Rye (19421998), but they may be amazed to learn what Santa Barbara artist Marc Lozano has been up to, sequestered away in his studio.
Curator Jeremy Tessmer will round out the show with a nod to the Tonalist influence on contemporary approaches to photography and printmaking with a special selection of works by Lindsey Ross and Monica Wiesblott.
Most of the artists in this exhibition have shown with the gallery before, but this project will relocate their works within a broader art historical context as well as showcasing Sullivan Goss’ longstanding passion for the look and feel of American Tonalism.
TONALISM NOW is presented as the contemporary counterpart to the Gallery’s concurrent exhibition of historical material, TONALISM THEN: 1870 - 1930.
​Rooted in landscape painting of the French Barbizon school, California artists of the pictorial approach to painting known as Tonalism, active from the 1870’s thru 1930’s, emphasized muted color harmonies, low value contrasts, luminous effects and the moody and ephemeral. Misty skies at dawn and dusk proliferated as they fashioned poetic imagery from vaporous views of the region’s open spaces. Lockwood De Forest’s “Santa Barbara Marsh” and “Tonal Moon,” or Alexander Harrison’s “Olive Tree,” are examples among the thirty or so works that glow against the dark walls of the gallery in “Tonalism Then."
Nothing invigorates the mind like a good conversation, and that’s exactly what curator Jeremy Tessmer has created by pairing these two excellent shows of Tonalism. One is a historical survey of the style’s original period from 1870-1930, the other a group show of artists who reference the style today, with work ranging from traditional oil painting on canvas or board to photography and tapestry. Thanks to the way that some contemporary artists have adopted the softness, the attention to mood, and the unity of composition that characterized the original generation of Tonalist works, there’s a dialogue here that grounds the recent work in art history, and that makes the older paintings look fresh.
The latter years of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century were times of contrast in landscape painting. Hudson River School painters in the United States were painting romantic visions of the grandeur of America while French painters of the Barbizon School were celebrating the calm simplicity of rural life. The high-keyed and scintillating landscapes of the Impressionists complemented low-keyed, poetic, and atmospheric landscapes of the American Tonalists.
