Natural Histories, an exhibit celebrating western landscape in painting and photography, opens Friday, January 17th, with an artists reception from 5 to 7 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. The exhibition will include recent paintings by Paul Roehl and photography by Claire Lerner.
Organized to explore various styles and themes in landscape painting and photography, Natural Histories investigates the relationship between abstraction and landscape painting, the effects of photography on landscapes, and the consideration of the materiality in both mediums. The exhibit reflects the complex and ambiguous relationship between humans and the environment—a relationship of particular importance here in the West.
The exhibit can be seen Wednesday through Friday from 11 to 4 p.m., Saturdays, 12 noon to 4 p.m. or by appointment through February 22nd, 2020.
Pictured above: “Carmel” – Paul Roehl
Sphere of Mortal Life Series # 7 – Claire Lerner
About the Artists:
Claire Lerner was born and raised in New York, New York. She received her MFA and BFA in Fine Art from both the State University of New York at Buffalo and the State University College at Buffalo. After graduate school Claire moved to California where she was a member of the photography faculty at Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey, California for ten years. In 2000 she began teaching black and white darkroom photography, alternative photographic processes, studio art, and digital arts at the Santa Catalina School in Monterey, California. Her work has been collected by a broad range of private and public institutions, including the Monterey Museum of Art, Visa Corporation, Redwood City, CA, Cowell College, UCSC, PMI, Corporate Headquarters, Walnut Creek, CA, Kaiser Permanente, and the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, Monterey, CA.
Paul Roehl was raised in California, primarily in the South Bay Area. He received an MA in painting and an MFA in pictorial arts from San Jose State University. He has taught college level painting, printmaking and drawing as well as art history and art appreciation for over twenty years. His work has been shown at the San Jose Art Museum, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, Monterey Museum of Art and the Berkeley Art Center. Though his primary interest is in contemporary non-objective or abstract imagery, he enjoys sketching plein-air and accurately recreating the techniques and style of late 19th and early 20th century landscape painters. He also turns to earlier Barbizon school painters for inspiration as well as American tonalist painters such as George Innes and William Keith. He finds the visual poetry of these artists’ subtle, fresh and inspiring
