Saturday and Sunday June 2 - 3 11 am to 6 pm
351 Lewis St, West Oakland 94607
Six Golden Gate Series paintings will be featured along with other recent works.
This is an opportunity to have a lively conversation with me and other guests. I will be serving bread, cheese, wine and cappuccinos. Go to 'Visit Studio' on this website for directions to my studio.
Postcards and Archival Prints:
Postcards of Oakland and Occupy derived from some of my favorite paintings will be available, as well as archival prints of many of my works.
The Golden Gate Bridge from Kirby Cove, oil/canvas, 20" X 36". 2012
"The Golden Gate Bridge from Kirby Cove' (above) will be among those on view at my Open Studio.
Other Exhibitions:
George Krevsky Gallery The painting below, titled 'The Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands' is on exhibition at the George Krevsky Gallery. 77 Kearny St., San Francisco until June 9th. It is also included in the gallery's gorgeous catalogue for the exhibition 'Artistic Visions of the Golden Gate Bridge' available through ePressBooks,Inc.
SFMOMA Artists' Gallery, Fort Mason
Four other paintings from my 'Golden Gate Series' will be on exhibition at the SFMOMA Artists' Gallery from May 26 - June 28th. Including this panorama :
Golden Gate Bridge from Below the Palace of the Legion of Honor
About the Golden Gate Series:
When I started these works, I thought “Painting this bridge is akin to painting the Eiffel Tower. It's been 'done' so many times!” However, I soon discovered that this particular marriage of high technology and landscape is archetypal. What began as a few paintings became a series.
From an outlook below the Palace of the Legion of Honor (See above) the bridge appears improbably delicate. A fine web of steel spanning two headlands. It is an expression of pure physics. As beautiful as a spider's web and almost as minimal.
Up close - from the waterfront approaching Fort Point - the bridge overwhelms with it's scale and with the muscular grace of it's art deco details. The swells rounding Fort Point roll past the orange towers that rise from the ocean to conduct a steady flow of pedestrians and vehicles effortlessly across the watery chasm.
Where I stand painting this engineering marvel the waves crash up against the waterfront, splashing me and my painting and, on one occasion, drenching my truck.
The bridge embodies in its design the conviction of the nineteenth and early twentieth century that technology could overcome nature, extract great benefits from it, but exist in harmony with it. It took the horrors of modern warfare, the nuclear age, environmental degradation and climate change to tarnish this conviction. From a visual point of view the bridge expresses this antiquated aspiration perfectly.
But from the point of view of function the bridge is a conduit for an enormous amount of internal combustion traffic-hooked on fossil fuels. The Golden Gate Bridge Commission could help break this addiction by offering owners of electric cars three, toll free years. This would be a great incentive to go electric.
The bridge also embodies the optimism of the Roosevelt period. Amadeo Giannini, the founder of the Bank of America, in the midst of the Great Depression purchased all the bonds for the construction of the bridge so as to provide employment for workers in San Francisco. It is impossible today to imagine a banker with such a sense of social obligation!
View this video of me painting at Fort Point courtesy of Diane Harrigan "Postcards from SF"