Impressionism is not exclusively French or European. California has produced many great…read moreimpressionist painters going back to the later part of the 19th Century. One of my favorites is Evelyn McCormick. She was born in California and studied art in San Francisco and Paris before moving to Monterey after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. She painted oils in an impressionist style of Monterey's historic buildings and adobes. What I like best about her paintings is the sky, a beautiful, azure blue, Monet-like sky, dazzling and bright, heavy with swirling palette and feminine texture, framing everything beneath it, whether a historic building, or a garden, or landscape scenery, in soft and tender light.
McCormick was a member of the Carmel Art Association (CAA), which was founded in Carmel in 1927. The CAA included in its membership through the years other great California painters including, among my favorites, Arthur Hill Gilbert (who painted in distinctive yellow and golden hues and green), William Silva (who didn't start painting until he was well past 55), and S.C. Yuan (whose heavy palette reflected a soul heavy with burden), and many others.
Tonight I went to the Carmel Art Association for an exhibition of the works of three contemporary CAA painters, Pam Carroll, Miguel Dominguez, and Alicia Meheen.
Pam paints in Trompe-l'oeil, which is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the illusion that objects appear in three-dimension. There are certain objects that appear as recurrent themes in her paintings, such as toys, fruits, coins, books, various tableware that give her work a very distinctive look. Some paintings that are hyper realistic become works of pure technique devoid of feeling; but, Pam's paintings are charged with human emotion and warmth and reflect her beauty as a woman and artist.
She also paints portraits that invariably capture some inner essential quality of those she paints. Here's her self-portrait:
http://static2.px.yelp.com/photo/A6_tOTw6csEkKeYCpM8cYg/l
Stunning , isn't it....? You can feel the intensity in her eyes. When she paints she's ferocious, tearing away at the veneer on the surface of life to convey some essential magic hidden away in the mundane things that exist around us, things that represent love, friendship, family, hope, the magic of childhood, things that bind us together as human beings and celebrate our differences.
On the weekend, when I'm walking through Carmel, I'll occasionally meander into the Carmel Art Association and admire the contemporary art of its current membership hanging on the walls. There are benches in the viewing rooms, just like at the MET, where you can sit and look and meditate on the art or just take a rest...
The Carmel Art Association is open to the public. There is no fee to enter. Check it out. And, if you see Pam there, give her my love and best regards...