Light Landing, a painting by Maria Rendón, whose work is on view through April 22 at Sullivan Goss, in Santa Barbara, California.
© The artist. Courtesy Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, California
Angela Perko is a self-taught painter here in Santa Barbara. Angela and her husband own a rare bookstore, and she credits the exposure to art books for sparking her interest in painting.
Driving through the Carpinteria Valley to meet esteemed painter Whitney Brooks Abbott, I notice the abandoned greenhouses on the roadside near her house. They stand there in a ghostly manner, both worn out and defiant, surrounded by the beauty of the natural landscape. Not surprisingly, when I walk in Whitney’s studio, I see “Field Notes,” the main work of her first solo show at Sullivan Goss in five years — a painting of the greenhouses.
WITH A VISUAL LANGUAGE ALL ITS OWN, Nathan Huff’s third solo exhibition at Sullivan Goss is now open. Many will remember the ladders, small boats, and oaks that populated his earlier works. They return again, though subtly changed, evoking even more clearly earthly transience and a pull to the ethereal realms.
A new book has just been published on the art and life of artist Wosene Worke Kosrof called WOSENE: Beyond Words.
Making my way in to see Nicole Strasburg’s new Sullivan Goss exhibition Surfacing, diverse enticements were there to behold in this spatially generous, three-gallery-deep art space. This summer’s triple play of shows includes Holli Harmon’s intriguingly multifaceted To Feast on Clouds and the seasonal group show spritzer dubbed Summer Fling in the large middle space, including colorful, eye-buzzing works by Penelope Gottlieb, Robert Townsend, and one of Hank Pitcher’s fetching surfboard “portraits.”
By association, Strasburg’s conceptually elastic variations on seascape paintings should also qualify as summery fare. And yet these seaside scenarios, taken individually and as a variegated and integrated ensemble, can take on introspective and artistically adventurous sub-turns, far from the realm of idle beachgoer’s escapism.
I love to write about artists’ homes. They are never ordinary. This home is no exception. It was built by landscape artist Lockwood de Forest, with help from his son-in-law, architect Winsor Soule. There are numerous examples of de Forest’s paintings in Santa Barbara at the Sullivan Goss Gallery, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, and will also be in the future Chrisman California Islands Center in Carpinteria.
TWELVE GOUACHE PAINTINGS ON FABRIANO WATERCOLOR PAPER may be Holli Harmon’s crown jewel. Each one features a month of the year reproduced from an 1866 Farmer’s Almanac, when hand labor began to be replaced with machine farming. Each piece, inspired by her sketchbook, represents a month of the year at the Jalama Canyon Ranch, floating over deep blue cyanotype prints made using autochthonous vegetation.
Two shows open July 28 at Sullivan Goss: 1) Holli Harmon’s To Feast on Clouds: “An impressive group of 89 paintings of clouds rendered onto vintage tableware will take over the walls of one of the gallery’s spaces. The accumulation of clouds from sunny to stormy and everything in between creates a conversation about water, where it comes from and how it works in relation to the food we grow that eventually ends up on our tables.”
Nicole Strasburg’s Surfacing: “Long associated with 12 x 12 inch paintings on birch panels that seem to float away from the white walls of the gallery, the artist has, in the last two years, adopted a slightly larger square format of 14 x 14 inch panels with beautifully-finished wood sides. Impressive suites of paintings in both formats can be seen and purchased in this special exhibition. They will be joined by a focused presentation of larger paintings that revel in the endless forms and colors offered by those places where ocean, sky, and land meet.”
Santa Barbara, with fewer than 90,000 people, barely makes it into California’s 100 largest cities. But this coastal enclave has an outsize role in the state’s history.
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...[H]ead a couple blocks north on Anacapa Street to Sullivan Goss, a private three-room gallery around the corner from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, where pieces can cost as much as a home down payment and the collection leans heavily on evocative portrayals of the American West. Catch the current exhibition by the Santa Barbara-based artist Robin Gowen, called “Last Shadow & First Light” (through July 24), of large-format paintings of Central California’s distinctive landscapes.
IF THE JOB OF THE ARTIST IS TO REVEAL NEW EXPERIENCES, the exhibition Where the Wild Things Grow has succeeded. Even if you've been to the magnificent Ganna Walska Lotusland gardens, you'll see the place anew thanks to 28 different artists who have transferred their Lotusland experience onto paper, sculpture, and paintings. If you listen carefully, you can hear the plants talk.
The community will have a chance to meet local artists while also supporting Lotusland at the same time in Santa Barbara on Thursday from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.
Sullivan Goss Art Gallery in Santa Barbara is excited to collaborate with Lotusland in Montecito.
Opening May 26 at Sullivan Goss: a solo exhibit by Robin Gowen. “Last Shadow & First Light is an expansive overview of Robin’s enduring relationship to the landscape of the central coast. While she is adept at painting still life, figures, and architecture, the paintings in this exhibition celebrate her deep knowledge of the unpeopled places she visits regularly. Meditations on vast expanses of rolling hills along with native oak and sycamore trees are the main compositional elements.” Below: “Bitterwater Creek Cattle.”
She was born in Washington, D.C., in 1907 to a military family of high standing. He was born in L.A. in 1968 to a Hollywood family of note.
East Coast, West Coast. Modern, contemporary. Grandmother, grandson.
Betty Lane, an artist first and foremost, but a diarist, too. Christopher Noxon, a writer first, but then an illustrator and now a painter.
Opening March 31 at Sullivan Goss: paintings by two artists, Betty Lane and Christopher Noxon (whose studio was a highlight of last fall’s Ojai Studio Artists tour). Below: Noxon’s “Meditation Mount.”
Through April 24th, Sullivan Goss will show Surreal Women as a companion exhibition to its REAL WOMEN: Realist Art by American Women exhibition of 2021. The exhibition embraces intuition, bypassing the intellectual constructs of Breton’s infamous manifesto to go straight for the heart.
HONORING WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH and paying tribute to women who joined the Surrealist Movement that began in France entered the America in the 1920s, Sullivan Goss curators Susan Bush and Jeremy Tessmer chose fifteen contemporary women artists for Surreal Women, on view through April 24th.
Montecito dynamic duo Bill and Sandi Nicholson co-hosted a boffo bash at the Sullivan Goss Gallery for a new feature documentary, Helen Believe, which debuted at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
It’s always fascinating to see how creative people evolve and continue to create in different ways throughout their lives. Lynda Weinman was an early pioneer in computer and web graphics who went on to cofound (with her husband, Bruce Heavin) Lynda.com, one of the first online educational enterprises to teach digital tools and skills. They sold the company to LinkedIn in 2015, and Weinman began to pursue an interest in ceramics. She discovered 3D clay printing in 2020, and today she is one of its foremost pioneers, working fluently with geometric and parametric forms. Her 3D-printed ceramic and plastic sculptures are currently on view at Sullivan Goss, An American Gallery.
“Crop the bottom!” said the comment on Instagram about Patricia Chidlaw’s painting for the 38th Santa Barbara International Film Festival poster. It was a reaction that we expected. But it is the bottom half of the piece (which showcases a parking lot with cars stationed against a wall) that elevates the work to the sublime.
“To be sure, Patricia’s work beautifully captures environments while not editing out the visual noise of power lines, graffiti, and disrepair,” says David B. Walker, CEO of the Nevada Museum of Art, where Chidlaw had a major exhibit in 2014. “These elements play antagonist roles in her eloquent compositions.”
AS TECHNOLOGY GROWS AND IMPACTS THE WORLD AROUND US, people turn to the natural world for reprieve and inspiration. Regenerate, the latest exhibition at Sullivan Goss, is bursting with figures that reference but also morph natural figures, shaping them into something are as familiar as they are unrecognizable. Featuring the artworks of J. Bradley Greer and local artist and SBIFF Board of Directors President Lynda Weinman, Regenerate asks viewers to consider their position in between nature and technology and if these things are as far apart from each other as one might initially believe.
Just in front of the 2023 Academy Awards, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) is bringing some of the industry's top stars for a multi-day event of films and tributes. SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling says in its 38th year, the festival will have 52 world premieres, 79 U.S. premiers and 43 countries will be represented. The festival runs from February 8 to 18. The date has moved in recent years to stay close to the Oscar nominations and awards ceremony. Durling enthusiastically talked about the event as he unveiled the poster from acclaimed local artist Patricia Chidlaw inside the Sullivan and Goss art gallery in downtown Santa Barbara.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) has unveiled its poster and programming for this year's festival set to kick off on February 8.
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A press conference was held at the Sullivan Goss art gallery on Wednesday morning where Santa Barbara artist Patricia Chidlaw was announced as the creator of this year's poster.
From "Dude" to "Dude" - cultural stereotypes live on in new images. The land of the West is just as captivating as the figures who used to roam it. Where there once cowboys blazing the trail of Manifest Destiny, we now have surfers who keep their gaze fixed on the horizon, waiting for their opportunity to work with the ocean around them.
Sullivan Goss: An American Gallery is presenting “The Search for the Modern West” as its first exhibit for 2023.
The exhibit features paintings, sculptures and prints that address the mythology, history and real life experiences of the American West.
“Imaginary Falls in Charcoal, Ink and Oil,” a solo exhibition by Joseph Goldyne, is on view through Dec. 26 at Sullivan Goss: An American Gallery, 11 E. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara.
“Mr. Goldyne is a well-regarded and widely-collected print maker, but these imaginary waterfalls are all unique works executed with neither press nor plate,” said Jeremy Tessmer, gallery curator and director. “Instead, the plurality of works in the exhibition represent the artist’s first efforts in charcoal presented in context with three paintings in oil and india ink.”
On Thursday, November 3rd, Natalie Arnoldi and Joseph Goldyne will share a space at Sullivan Goss gallery in Santa Barbara, California. Their complimentary solo exhibitions of paintings and drawings of the natural world promise a contemporary view of the sublime.
NUANCED, tantalizing, messy… reflecting the accretion and assimilation of a lifetime of rich experience, the 16 canvases that make up Beyond Words at Sullivan Goss speak volumes about the fullness of the years Wosene Worke Kosrof has lived. From his birth in 1950 and early years in Ethiopia, to his immigration to the United States in 1978, to his relocation to California in 1991, Kosrof has traveled, savoring experiences, and exploring new worlds as they opened to him.