ARTISTS
color & light
Six artists interpret the world in pastels and watercolors Frank LaLumia "I quit my last job on September 9, 1977, at 5:05 p.m.," says Frank LaLumia.
Norman Kolpas / Southwest Art
01 Mar, 2009
Six artists interpret the world in pastels and watercolors
Frank LaLumia
"I quit my last job on September 9, 1977, at 5:05 p.m.," says Frank LaLumia. "And I've been a full-time artist ever since." That to-the-minute precision underscores LaLumia's lifelong dedication to what he has always regarded as his true calling. "I've always done art," he says. "The only jobs I ever had were to keep body and soul together so I could keep painting."
An Illinois native, LaLumia studied for a time at the Art Institute of Chicago. He began his painting career in San Francisco, spent 22 years in Santa Fe, and since 2004 has made his home in Trinidad, CO, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. "Living here at nearly 7,000 feet, the light has a really beautiful clarity," says LaLumia. This is what he aims to depict in his two mediums of choice: oils and watercolors. "I try to use watercolors in a way that oils can't match," he continues, "to capture the softness, fluidity, and the spontaneity of a subject."
That goal certainly suits his devotion to plein-air painting. Working on location in the Southwest - or in places as far-flung as Morpcco or China - the 60-year-old artist produces gently impressionistic watercolors. "What I'm really trying to do as a painter," LaLumia sums up, "is to paint the light."
DOSSIIR
REPRESENTATION
Tirage Fine Art Gallery, Pasadena, CA; Bottoms Art Galleries, Montecito, CA; McMahon Rne Art, Ruidoso, NM; Cogswell Gallery, Vail, CO; Purgatoire River Trading Company, Trinidad, CO; Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA; www.lalumia.com.
UPCOMING SHOW
Participant, Society for the Advancement of Plein-Air Painting, Catalina Island, CA, June 6-7.
Nancy McGowan
"Kids always draw when they're little. Most quit after they're 5 or 6. But I never stopped," says Nancy McGowan. For virtually all of her 70 years, art, particularly naturalistic watercolors of birds, fish, and other Texas wildlife, has been her obsession. "Neither of my parents was artistic or keen on nature, but I wouldn't stop drawing. So my father, who worked on a seismology team, brought me home those massive drums of paper from the seismographs," she says.
She attended a commercial art school in Houston that "was wonderfully close to the zoo, so I took all my lunch hours there." And she fell in love with watercolors, she says, "because they were easy to tote and easy to replace."
McGowan found the ideal job back in 1960 when the Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission "decided they needed a staff artist. I worked there for 10 years. All the wardens would bring me creatures dead and alive to draw." That work led to illustrating books on Texas freshwater and saltwater fishes, birds, and various North American endangered species. Freelance since 1970 and now based in the town of Temple, midway between Austin and Dallas, she still loves the immediacy of her chosen medium. "It's fast and transparent and glowing, and some of the mistakes have a serendipity about them," she says. "Watercolor is a joy."
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Gallery Shoal Creek, Austin, TX; White Horse Station, Clifton, TX.
UPCOMING SHOW
Participant, Artworks 2009, Cultural Activities Center, Temple, TX, April 20-May 8.
Kathleen Cook
"I got my first set of pastels as a Christmas gift from my dad when I was 12," Kathleen Cook remembers. "He was a painter and commercial artist, and I loved the fact that he thought I was ready for serious art supplies." Mentored as well by pastel portraitist Leona Turner, for whom she also babysat while growing up in Amarillo, TX, Cook earned her bachelor of fine arts degree at Texas Tech University before launching herself into a successful 13-year career as a fashion illustrator.
Her early love of pastels stayed with Cook, who moved to the Texas Hill Country and, in 1982, became a full-time fine artist. Steeped in her medium of choice since childhood, well trained, and with substantial experience executing illustrations to order, she achieved satisfying results from the start. "It was exciting," she says. "I found that every idea I had I was able to accomplish."
Now, on the verge of turning 60 and happily settled in her own studio-gallery in the small town of Ingram, TX, Cook appears to be at the pinnacle of her pastel powers, executing vibrantly realistic portraits, still lifes, and landscapes that glow intensely with gemlike hues. "Most pastel artists call themselves painters, even though there's no brush," she explains. "Pastels are made of pigment with just enough binder to hold them in stick form, so you're working with pure color."
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Riverbend Fine Art, Marble Falls, TX; Kathleen Cook Art Studio & Gallery, Ingram, TX; www.kathleencook.com.
UPCOMING SHOW
Solo show, Riverbend Fine Art, March 18-April 4.
Barry Sapp
One visit to the iconic southwestern landscape of the Four Corners region was all it took for Barry Sapp to start painting in watercolors. "I'd been doing a lot of pen and ink, but the colors I saw there were so incredible that I thought I'd better give up the black-and-white and do something with some color to it." he recalls of that 1986 trip.
To say there's "some" color to Sapp's paintings is a dramatic understatement. The luminous hues of his realistic images of pueblos, cliff dwellings, Native Americans, horses, and burros possess an intensity rare in the fluid medium. "I do try to paint darker, deeper, and richer than most watercolorists," explains the 66-year-old, New Jersey-born, primarily self-taught artist. Now living in Arizona, Sapp trained as a draftsman and worked as a designer for a plastics company in Tucson before devoting himself full time to painting in 1993.
"I like my paintings to be able to stand up visually to oils or acrylics," he says. To that end, Sapp has developed a technique for mounting his watercolors on canvas and applying several coatings that make them UV-resistant and preserve them archivally without the need for framing under glass. "Watercolors bring out certain nuances that you can't achieve in other mediums," he says. "And this way, they'll never look washed out."
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Jane Hamilton Fine Art, Tucson, AZ; Verano Fine Art Gallery, Bisbee, AZ; www.barrysappfineart.com.
UPCOMING SHOW
Group show, Jane Hamilton Rne Art, March 9-28.
Cathy Locke
Approach the barn on the 2'/2-acre ranch where Cathy Locke lives near northern San Francisco Bay, and you might hear lively salsa music or the Latin rock of Carlos Santana. Enter, and you'll behold Locke, with blocks or sticks of pastel in hand, interacting with large sheets of paper mounted on plywood, sometimes caressing the surface with color, sometimes attacking it, as she literally dances an artwork into existence. "What I try to do," she explains, "is play the entire painting, moving back, moving forward, trying to see what area needs attention next."
Locke's highly kinetic technique results in figurative works surrounded by expressive patterns of richly saturated color. "I think about what color palette and images will convey an emotion," says the artist, who describes herself as an "archaeologist of emotion."
Her process evolved while the Chicago native earned her master of fine arts degree from San Francisco's Academy of Art University between 2000 and 2007, marking a dramatic departure from her earlier studies and work in illustration and graphic design. She sums up the transformation by saying she replaced her past commitment to "perfect technique" with a more intuitive approach. And pastels provide an ideal medium. "You can both draw and paint with them," says Locke. "So they allow for a real sense of freedom."
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Gallery 599, Sausalito, CA; Christopher Hill Gallery, St. Helena, CA; Silver Heron Art Gallery, Depoe Bay, OR; Patou Fine Art, Coral Gables and Dania Beach, FL; www.cathylocke.com.
UPCOMING SHOWS
Five Decades of Women's Art, Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, CA, March 9-May 29. Group show, Silver Heron Art Gallery, September 1-30.
Miguel Dominguez
"We artists tend to paint what is around us," says Miguel Dom铆nguez with soft-spoken understatement. Though he is a respected 35-year member of California's Carmel Art Association, the 67-year-old painter of meticulous impressionistic landscapes still speaks of his accomplishments with a modesty tracing at least partly to his humble beginnings: born in a Mexican neighborhood of El Paso, TX. then raised from the age of 8 in agricultural Gonzales, CA.
Always deemed "the class artist" by his schoolteachers, Dom铆nguez began honing his skills at community colleges. He fol- _ lowed a two-year stint in the army with five and a half years at a cartography firm. In his spare time, working with the dregs of mapmaking ink bottles, he drew portraits and landscapes. Friends liked them, he recalls, "and one handed me some little jars of watercolors and said, 'Why don't you give these a try?'"
Success built steadily. At age 30, urged on by Alexandra, the high-school sweetheart who became his wife, Dominguez turned to painting full time. Almost four decades later, as of this January, he had completed 5,105 paintings. "I started keeping track in January 1971," he explains. "I put a catalog number on the back of every one." With so much beauty around him in the Carmel Valley, where the Dominguezes now live, there are no signs he'll slow down his prodigious output.
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Portnoy Galleries, Carmel, CA; Carmel Art Association, Carmel, CA; J. Howell Fine Art, Healdsburg, CA.
UPCOMING SHOW
Three-person show, Carmel Art Association, September.
AUTHOR AFFILIATION
Norman Kolpas is a Los Angeles-based freelancer who writes for Mountain Living and Colorado Homes & Lifestyles as well as Southwest Art.
COPYRIGHT: Copyright Active Interest Media Mar 2009. Provided by Proquest- CSA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Only fair use as provided by the United States copyright law is permitted.
PROQUEST-CSA, LLC- MAKES NO WARRANTY REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR TIMELINESS OF THE LICENSED MATERIALS OR ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.
Frank LaLumia
"I quit my last job on September 9, 1977, at 5:05 p.m.," says Frank LaLumia. "And I've been a full-time artist ever since." That to-the-minute precision underscores LaLumia's lifelong dedication to what he has always regarded as his true calling. "I've always done art," he says. "The only jobs I ever had were to keep body and soul together so I could keep painting."
An Illinois native, LaLumia studied for a time at the Art Institute of Chicago. He began his painting career in San Francisco, spent 22 years in Santa Fe, and since 2004 has made his home in Trinidad, CO, in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. "Living here at nearly 7,000 feet, the light has a really beautiful clarity," says LaLumia. This is what he aims to depict in his two mediums of choice: oils and watercolors. "I try to use watercolors in a way that oils can't match," he continues, "to capture the softness, fluidity, and the spontaneity of a subject."
That goal certainly suits his devotion to plein-air painting. Working on location in the Southwest - or in places as far-flung as Morpcco or China - the 60-year-old artist produces gently impressionistic watercolors. "What I'm really trying to do as a painter," LaLumia sums up, "is to paint the light."
DOSSIIR
REPRESENTATION
Tirage Fine Art Gallery, Pasadena, CA; Bottoms Art Galleries, Montecito, CA; McMahon Rne Art, Ruidoso, NM; Cogswell Gallery, Vail, CO; Purgatoire River Trading Company, Trinidad, CO; Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA; www.lalumia.com.
UPCOMING SHOW
Participant, Society for the Advancement of Plein-Air Painting, Catalina Island, CA, June 6-7.
Nancy McGowan
"Kids always draw when they're little. Most quit after they're 5 or 6. But I never stopped," says Nancy McGowan. For virtually all of her 70 years, art, particularly naturalistic watercolors of birds, fish, and other Texas wildlife, has been her obsession. "Neither of my parents was artistic or keen on nature, but I wouldn't stop drawing. So my father, who worked on a seismology team, brought me home those massive drums of paper from the seismographs," she says.
She attended a commercial art school in Houston that "was wonderfully close to the zoo, so I took all my lunch hours there." And she fell in love with watercolors, she says, "because they were easy to tote and easy to replace."
McGowan found the ideal job back in 1960 when the Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission "decided they needed a staff artist. I worked there for 10 years. All the wardens would bring me creatures dead and alive to draw." That work led to illustrating books on Texas freshwater and saltwater fishes, birds, and various North American endangered species. Freelance since 1970 and now based in the town of Temple, midway between Austin and Dallas, she still loves the immediacy of her chosen medium. "It's fast and transparent and glowing, and some of the mistakes have a serendipity about them," she says. "Watercolor is a joy."
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Gallery Shoal Creek, Austin, TX; White Horse Station, Clifton, TX.
UPCOMING SHOW
Participant, Artworks 2009, Cultural Activities Center, Temple, TX, April 20-May 8.
Kathleen Cook
"I got my first set of pastels as a Christmas gift from my dad when I was 12," Kathleen Cook remembers. "He was a painter and commercial artist, and I loved the fact that he thought I was ready for serious art supplies." Mentored as well by pastel portraitist Leona Turner, for whom she also babysat while growing up in Amarillo, TX, Cook earned her bachelor of fine arts degree at Texas Tech University before launching herself into a successful 13-year career as a fashion illustrator.
Her early love of pastels stayed with Cook, who moved to the Texas Hill Country and, in 1982, became a full-time fine artist. Steeped in her medium of choice since childhood, well trained, and with substantial experience executing illustrations to order, she achieved satisfying results from the start. "It was exciting," she says. "I found that every idea I had I was able to accomplish."
Now, on the verge of turning 60 and happily settled in her own studio-gallery in the small town of Ingram, TX, Cook appears to be at the pinnacle of her pastel powers, executing vibrantly realistic portraits, still lifes, and landscapes that glow intensely with gemlike hues. "Most pastel artists call themselves painters, even though there's no brush," she explains. "Pastels are made of pigment with just enough binder to hold them in stick form, so you're working with pure color."
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Riverbend Fine Art, Marble Falls, TX; Kathleen Cook Art Studio & Gallery, Ingram, TX; www.kathleencook.com.
UPCOMING SHOW
Solo show, Riverbend Fine Art, March 18-April 4.
Barry Sapp
One visit to the iconic southwestern landscape of the Four Corners region was all it took for Barry Sapp to start painting in watercolors. "I'd been doing a lot of pen and ink, but the colors I saw there were so incredible that I thought I'd better give up the black-and-white and do something with some color to it." he recalls of that 1986 trip.
To say there's "some" color to Sapp's paintings is a dramatic understatement. The luminous hues of his realistic images of pueblos, cliff dwellings, Native Americans, horses, and burros possess an intensity rare in the fluid medium. "I do try to paint darker, deeper, and richer than most watercolorists," explains the 66-year-old, New Jersey-born, primarily self-taught artist. Now living in Arizona, Sapp trained as a draftsman and worked as a designer for a plastics company in Tucson before devoting himself full time to painting in 1993.
"I like my paintings to be able to stand up visually to oils or acrylics," he says. To that end, Sapp has developed a technique for mounting his watercolors on canvas and applying several coatings that make them UV-resistant and preserve them archivally without the need for framing under glass. "Watercolors bring out certain nuances that you can't achieve in other mediums," he says. "And this way, they'll never look washed out."
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Jane Hamilton Fine Art, Tucson, AZ; Verano Fine Art Gallery, Bisbee, AZ; www.barrysappfineart.com.
UPCOMING SHOW
Group show, Jane Hamilton Rne Art, March 9-28.
Cathy Locke
Approach the barn on the 2'/2-acre ranch where Cathy Locke lives near northern San Francisco Bay, and you might hear lively salsa music or the Latin rock of Carlos Santana. Enter, and you'll behold Locke, with blocks or sticks of pastel in hand, interacting with large sheets of paper mounted on plywood, sometimes caressing the surface with color, sometimes attacking it, as she literally dances an artwork into existence. "What I try to do," she explains, "is play the entire painting, moving back, moving forward, trying to see what area needs attention next."
Locke's highly kinetic technique results in figurative works surrounded by expressive patterns of richly saturated color. "I think about what color palette and images will convey an emotion," says the artist, who describes herself as an "archaeologist of emotion."
Her process evolved while the Chicago native earned her master of fine arts degree from San Francisco's Academy of Art University between 2000 and 2007, marking a dramatic departure from her earlier studies and work in illustration and graphic design. She sums up the transformation by saying she replaced her past commitment to "perfect technique" with a more intuitive approach. And pastels provide an ideal medium. "You can both draw and paint with them," says Locke. "So they allow for a real sense of freedom."
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Gallery 599, Sausalito, CA; Christopher Hill Gallery, St. Helena, CA; Silver Heron Art Gallery, Depoe Bay, OR; Patou Fine Art, Coral Gables and Dania Beach, FL; www.cathylocke.com.
UPCOMING SHOWS
Five Decades of Women's Art, Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, CA, March 9-May 29. Group show, Silver Heron Art Gallery, September 1-30.
Miguel Dominguez
"We artists tend to paint what is around us," says Miguel Dom铆nguez with soft-spoken understatement. Though he is a respected 35-year member of California's Carmel Art Association, the 67-year-old painter of meticulous impressionistic landscapes still speaks of his accomplishments with a modesty tracing at least partly to his humble beginnings: born in a Mexican neighborhood of El Paso, TX. then raised from the age of 8 in agricultural Gonzales, CA.
Always deemed "the class artist" by his schoolteachers, Dom铆nguez began honing his skills at community colleges. He fol- _ lowed a two-year stint in the army with five and a half years at a cartography firm. In his spare time, working with the dregs of mapmaking ink bottles, he drew portraits and landscapes. Friends liked them, he recalls, "and one handed me some little jars of watercolors and said, 'Why don't you give these a try?'"
Success built steadily. At age 30, urged on by Alexandra, the high-school sweetheart who became his wife, Dominguez turned to painting full time. Almost four decades later, as of this January, he had completed 5,105 paintings. "I started keeping track in January 1971," he explains. "I put a catalog number on the back of every one." With so much beauty around him in the Carmel Valley, where the Dominguezes now live, there are no signs he'll slow down his prodigious output.
DOSSIER
REPRESENTATION
Portnoy Galleries, Carmel, CA; Carmel Art Association, Carmel, CA; J. Howell Fine Art, Healdsburg, CA.
UPCOMING SHOW
Three-person show, Carmel Art Association, September.
AUTHOR AFFILIATION
Norman Kolpas is a Los Angeles-based freelancer who writes for Mountain Living and Colorado Homes & Lifestyles as well as Southwest Art.
COPYRIGHT: Copyright Active Interest Media Mar 2009. Provided by Proquest- CSA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Only fair use as provided by the United States copyright law is permitted.
PROQUEST-CSA, LLC- MAKES NO WARRANTY REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR TIMELINESS OF THE LICENSED MATERIALS OR ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED.