Through March 18, 2012

The Pacific Coast, defined by jagged mountains to the east and a vast expanse of ocean to the west, is the subject of “Shore to Summit,” landscape paintings of this region at Marcia Burtt Studio through March 18.

Artists Robert Abbott, Marcia Burtt, Patricia Doyle, Michael Ferguson, Ann Lofquist, Marilee Krause, Susan Petty, and Erling Sjovold each approach our dramatic landscape from a unique point of view and with a highly individual personal style, from a drawing of a single monolith in graphite on paper by Susan Petty to a refined oil painting of coastal foothills at night by Erling Sjovold.

Top: Patricia Doyle, “L’Eau Froide,”, acyrlic, 36×36 inches
Bottom: Marcia Burtt, “Slack Tide,” acrylic, 24×36 inches

Erling Sjovold, “S.B. Nocturne,” oil, 20×24 in.

Meg Torbert 1912–2011

Memorial gathering at 2:00 p.m., Sunday, January 22
Marcia Burtt Gallery, 517 Laguna, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
805-962-5588
If you can, please bring a painting by Meg to hang during the afternoon.

More…



Meg Torbert

In art as in life, Meg Torbert was unhampered by inertia. She lightheartedly painted over work she spent weeks on. She moved out of her retirement community after her husband died to live ten years in a bright condo with sunroom, churning out hundreds of paintings before moving back into retirement in her 80s. There she used the community studio daily, continuing to paint and to exhibit seriously through her 90s. At 88 she remarried. “We had to, she said, “All our friends were gossiping.”

Meg taught her artist friends the joy of “less is more,” of looking more than actually putting brush to canvas, of the freedom of interacting with a painting on its own terms.

Meg began to paint seriously only after retirement from a life in college teaching, interior design, and working as a curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where she hung shows for and wrote articles about some of the most important mid-century artists in the nation. She edited Design Quarterly, and introduced Japanese folk art to the U.S. in the early 60s in an exhibition that traveled widely and permanently influenced American taste.

It was my good luck to meet Meg in a painting class taught by Robert Frame at City College– her first painting class after she came to Santa Barbara. We began to paint together regularly, and she shepherded me through that tough period of every artist’s growth: figuring out how to make paintings rather than just turning out visual records.

We traveled a long way together, and I miss her every time I pick up a brush.

Marcia Burtt

Top: Meg Torbert, “Magnolias,” acrylic, 39 x36 inches
Bottom: Meg Torbert, “Wish You Were Here,” acrylic, 36 x 48 inches

click on image to view or download pdf

Ann Lofquist
softcover, 10×8 in., 38 pages. available in the gallery or to order online click here

Marcia Burtt: Santa Barbara County
softcover, 10×8 in., 40 pages. available in the gallery or to order online click here

Robert Abbott
softcover, 10×8 in., 36 pages. available in the gallery or to order online click here

Patricia Doyle

Still Life in Reds

acrylic
40×30 inches

4,500

Patricia Doyle

Turtle Pond

acrylic
36×36″

4,500

Ann Lofquist and Marcia Burtt

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contrasting Visions: Ann Lofquist and Marcia Burtt
November 12-January 15

MARCIA BURTT GALLERY
Santa Barbara, CA

Opening on Saturday, November 12, with a reception from 5:00 to 7:00, Marcia Burtt Gallery presents new paintings by Ann Lofquist and Marcia Burtt. This exhibition provides a unique chance to compare their distinctly different visions and methods. Among the new paintings will be plein air sketches of the same scenes painted by Lofquist and Burtt as they explored California coast and ranchlands for inspiration.

After living in New England for twenty years, Lofquist relocated to California in 2008. Her realistic style and fascination with a singular objects, be it a tree, a ridge, or structures at sunset, imbue her California landscapes with an atmospheric serenity and warmth. For Lofquist, “A painting begins with a search for a subject which moves me—one which usually involves driving many miles along backcountry roads seeking the right combination of terrain and atmosphere.” Stands of old-growth sycamores and oaks or the transition between suburban sprawl and California’s native chaparral fill her recent works.

“Urban subjects reflect the surroundings of my own community, where new housing tracts abut dry landscape still teeming with rattlesnakes, coyotes, and mountain lions. The juxtaposition of the enduring and the ephemeral, a favorite subject of mine, is everywhere in evidence in Southern California.”

Painting in acrylic as opposed to Lofquist’s oils, Burtt is drawn to qualities of color and light and how they form changing abstract patterns throughout the day. Burtt’s paintings rely on bold, expressive brush strokes. She focuses with great intensity on every subtlety of changing light. “Making a painting, for me, is a process of studying a subject over a period of hours or days. Eliciting meaning from a random collection of natural objects requires imposing structure while at the same time receptively seeing in a sensual way.  This dance between perception and intellect to create an object that holds a unique communication is the great joy of being a landscape painter.”

ABOUT ANN LOFQUIST

Ann Lofquist (b.1964-) is a painter whose landscapes resonate with a strong sense of place. Her intimate views capture transitory moments in time such as twilight, dusk, and dawn. Human yearnings and philosophical queries into our relationship with nature are all expressed through her exquisite rendition of form and light.

Like her historical predecessors in the French Barbizon School and the 19th-century American painter George Inness, Lofquist shares in the romantic search for meaning through an intimate and nuanced portrayal of nature’s changing light and mood. By continually revisiting the same sites and drawing new subtleties from her motif, Lofquist’s paintings speak to the transcendental experience of nature, its inherent spirituality, and to the importance of maintaining harmony between the natural and manmade worlds. Human presence, subtly included in all Lofquist’s work, is kept to a minimum in order to prevent the intrusion of any specific psychology.

Despite their calm and objective presence, Lofquist’s paintings are imbued with a sense of the sublime that is as much a function of her artistic imagination and memory as it is of external reality. She paints directly from the subject on small wooden panels in short, single sessions, then returns to her studio and uses these small sketches as source material for large studio paintings that take months to complete and often deviate from the original scene considerably.

Ann Lofquist received her master of fine arts degree from Indiana University in 1990. From 1990 to 1996, she was an assistant professor of art at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in New York and New England, and has shown at Hackett-Freedman, San Francisco; Spanierman Gallery, New York; Tatistcheff Gallery, New York; Winfield Gallery, Carmel, California; and Gross/McLeaf Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  She has been the recipient of several fellowships and awards, and was included in The Artist and the American Landscape, by John Driscoll (1998). She currently resides in Ventura County, California.

Marcia Burtt
giclée print

Afternoon Light, Bull Canyon can be printed up to 27 x 45″. To order, please email the gallery, cynthia@marciaburtt.com or call, 805-962-5588.

Questions about purchasing prints and catalogs ]]> http://www.artlacuna.com/mbs/2011/10/afternoon-light-bull-canyon-giclee/feed/ 0 http://www.artlacuna.com/mbs/2011/10/sundown-alamo-ranch-2-giclee/ http://www.artlacuna.com/mbs/2011/10/sundown-alamo-ranch-2-giclee/#comments Mon, 03 Oct 2011 23:12:48 +0000 admin http://www.artlacuna.com/mbs/?p=4858 Sundown, Alamo Ranch #2

Marcia Burtt
giclée print

Sundown, Alamo Ranch #2 can be printed up to 32 x 54″. To order, please email the gallery, cynthia@marciaburtt.com or call, 805-962-5588.

Questions about purchasing prints and catalogs ]]> http://www.artlacuna.com/mbs/2011/10/sundown-alamo-ranch-2-giclee/feed/ 0 http://www.artlacuna.com/mbs/2011/10/1111003/ http://www.artlacuna.com/mbs/2011/10/1111003/#comments Mon, 03 Oct 2011 23:06:45 +0000 admin http://www.artlacuna.com/mbs/?p=4978

Marcia Burtt

Between Squalls

acrylic
16 x 12 inches

1,500

no.1111003