CAPTURING THE VIEW

Landscape traditions

ACollector’s Feast at American Legacy Fine Arts showcases a diverse range of works from 37 established and emerging artists working in both contemporary and classical styles, offered at lower price points.

“With the gallery’s emphasis to advise on the development of significant art collections, the more accessible price points of the featured fine art in this exhibition provide a unique opportunity to acquire superb works for both beginning and established collectors,” says gallery director Elaine Adams. The exhibition, which runs November 16 through December 15, features artists such as Peter Adams, Michael Obermeyer, Jennifer Moses, Karl Dempwolf, Calvin Liang, Warren Chang and Jim McVicker.

Chang brings to the show two small works within his fieldworker paintings, Onion Field Study and Cards, the former depicting people hard at work in the field, and the latter showing a group of men taking a break to play a game of cards. “I’ve been painting the subject of fieldworkers for 17 years. At first, it was more about following the tradition of artists of the past, who also painted fieldworkers dating back as far as the 16th century with Bruegel, but especially during the 19th century by many artists, most prominent being Jean-François Millet,” says Chang. “So I was able to draw upon this historical inspiration and also from growing up in Monterey, reading the novels of John Steinbeck and witnessing the fieldworkers firsthand in Monterey County.”

The oak tree in Dempwolf’s oil The Old Ojai Barn is heavily textured, a result of the artist’s continuous layering of paint until he is satisfied with the work. The piece depicts a slightly shabby barn, flanked by two grand trees and surrounding crop fields. “The Old Ojai Barn was just sitting at the side of the road near Ojai and ready to fall over. I believe the day the oak decides it no longer wants to hold up the barn is [when it] will crumble,” Dempwolf muses.

“I wanted to focus on the boats sailing along the Southern California bay,” Liang says of his seascape Reflection. “The scene was really visually inspiring with light, color and reflections. I loved capturing the moment.” The piece skillfully shows the ripples of water in the bay, lending itself to slightly muddled reflections of the boats and dock.

McVicker says he was inspired by the combination and contrast of color, light and texture while creating his oil White Orchid, a piece painted from life beneath a skylight. “I was interested in the spatial relationship between the objects in the painting, the patterned rug and the atmosphere within the shallow space,” McVicker explains.

Works in A Collector’s Feast will be priced at no more than $4,000.

American Legacy Fine Arts 949 Linda Vista Avenue • Pasadena, CA 91103 • (626) 577-7733 www.americanlegacyfinearts.com