This is a story which may leave you with more questions than answers. It’s the story of a both obscure, yet acclaimed artist who pushed the boundaries of abstract watercolor paintings. Harvey Leepa did what some critics call his best work during a quarter of a century of seclusion in Montecito.
LIke most art collectors, the Nicholsons – Sandi and Bill – are interesting people. What makes them fascinating is the nature of their collection: All of the work is by women artists.
Nathan Huff's exhibition at the Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara, which runs until 2019 September 24, is titled The Stories We Tell Ourselves. The young Californian artist relies for his visual creations on elements spotted in nature and around him. In this exhibition are gathered works that include certain realities belonging to the plant world (trees, plants but no animals this time) to which are added representations in a reduced model of things produced by man (boats, ladders, etc.).
Monday, July 8, 2019, was the last day to view a collection of landscape painter Ray Strong’s work at the Wildling Museum in Santa Ynez Valley, the day coincidentally, I sat with Patricia Chidlaw in her studio to talk about painting.
Nathan Huff's paintings and sculptures are made of recognizable objects – boats, sails, trees, rocks – but combined in a dream-like way where all defy gravity and encourage you to do so, too. In his solo show "The Stories We Tell Ourselves," Huff brings a selection of works since he arrived in town to teach at Westmont in 2013.
ENGAGINGLY FAMILIAR, YET TEAMING WITH OFF THE WALL DYNAMICS, Nathan Huff: The Stories We Tell Ourselves will be center stage at Sullivan Goss - An American Gallery's 1st Thursday on August 1st from 5 to 8pm.
Barring any unknown knowns and known unknowns, our current most vital exhibition happening this summer is Inga Guzyte's "#rebelwomen" solo show at Sullivan Goss (11 E. Anapamu). And I'm not just hyping it because I wrote a cover story on her for Montecito Journal (cough, cough), but seriously, Guzyte is about to blow up big time, much like her friend David Flores.
Using recycled skateboard decks as her medium, Inga Guzyte (ingaguzyte.com) transforms her passion for skateboarding into sculptural art. Her new #RebelWomen series spotlights women from around the globe - Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Malala Yousafzai, Frida Kahlo - emphaszing their strength, courage, fearlessness, and wit.
Artist Inga Guzyte is lucky. She's been able to turn her three obsessions – skateboarding, art, and woodworking – into a career that is growing step by giant step.
#REBELWOMEN: Celebrates the World's Strongest Women at her upcoming art exhibition at Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara, California, starting June 1st.
How? That's the recurring question attending Inga Guzyte's upcoming exhibition at Sullivan Goss. How did a girl born in communist Lithuania end up in Santa Barbara? How did an exhibition full of shredded skateboards end up on the walls of a gallery known for historic American paintings? How on Earth does Inga Guzyte make these things?
CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS INFUSED WITH COURAGE… FRESH, EDGY, UNUSUAL. That’s contemporary art when Inga Guzyte is on the creating end. Born in Lithuania, raised in Germany, passionate about skateboarding and creating, and recently returned from time in New York and Europe, she will be opening her first solo exhibition with Sullivan Goss An American Gallery in June.
Dressed in sawdust-coated sneakers and a wide brim fedora, artist INGA GUZYTE can't help but smile at the stacks of old skateboard decks towering over her tiny studio space. "It's definitely time for a bigger workshop," she laughs, before adding: "I know it just looks like piles of old boards, but each one has such a unique story to tell."
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.
This spring in Santa Barbara, with wildflower-tripping and resplendent natural color palettes on the collective mind, painter Hank Pitcher’s latest exhibition at Sullivan Goss is right on time, and all about place.
Wondering how AI can inspire artists to create their best work? Renowned artist Chris Peters recently purchased a new NVIDIA TITAN RTX GPU with the intention of using it to create art. The results are stunning compositions generated by the AI, and actual oil paintings painted by Peters himself.
"Whatever's going on in the world ends up in your work. I like the idea of painters being witnesses – of showing truth as it is. I like painters being able to develop and discover an image of who we are." This is how Hank Pitcher describes the intention behind his latest work, an exhilerating and career-defining series that's now on view at Sullivan Goss in a show called Primal.
Training algorithms to generate art is, in some ways, the easy part. You feed them data, they look for patterns, and they do their best to replicate what they’ve seen. But like all automatons, AI systems are tireless and produce a never-ending stream of images. The tricky part, says German AI artist Mario Klingemann, is knowing what to do with it all.
Chris Peters, an artist who emerged out of the Pop Surrealist movement, has used A.I. in a new way to create paintings of landscapes that don’t actually exist. Using an algorithm “capable of ‘learning’ and ‘predicting,'” Peters fed the system a trove of curated landscape paintings. Soon, the A.I. was able to produce new digital images, and after processing and curating those landscapes, Peters painted his favorites in oil.
THE TALENT AND EXPERTISE OF WESTMONT COLLEGE'S art department faculty are illuminated in Sullivan Goss' latest exhibition Mentors and Makers. Showcasing the work of six artists and mentors from different media and backgrounds, the exhibition is a dazzling revue of some of Santa Barbara's most interesting creators.
Sullivan Goss [SG] opens its doors annually in December with its 100 Grand exhibit specifically to show works from only local artists, comprised of veteran professional locals and newbies. The concept is to price the art at $1,000 or less and keep the overall size minimalist, in a mission to encourage people with lesser budgets to own a work of art.