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TERRA: Best of San Francisco
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Stephanie Weber’s rich abstract paintings are studies in contrast between the rigid geometry of her rectilinear panels and the richly layered colors and textures they carry. Called a sensual minimalist, she cites the spiritual abstractionists Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt as prime influences and aims to create what she calls “an edgy balance” among the elements in her lush, pared-down paintings. Her work is inspired by nature in the broadest sense – be it earth, or what’s under the earth, or sky or flesh or bone or hair. “Art,” she says, “gives breadth to what you already know so you know it at a deeper level. Or it makes you think in some way you’ve never thought before.” A Berkeley resident who studied with Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff and Nathan Oliveira at the University of California at Los Angeles in the early ’60s, Weber comes out of the Bay Area abstract figurative tradition. Her pieces are in many museums, among them the Philadelphia Museum of Art and San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museums.
Acrylic on Wood
22 x 18 inches
1998
$2,000
HISTORY
My sister, older brother, twin brother and I were raised in the eucalyptus, redwood and oak-covered hills of Berkeley and Orinda, California. I studied political science and film and worked as a photographer while at UCLA. Following college, I wrote screenplays, made films, got married and my wife and I moved to foggy San Francisco and gave birth to twin boys. It was during the long baby-watches through the night that I began painting this latest series. The twins’ birth helped thematically as I loved and endured the “miracle of birth,” which is quite a messy thing. Also, in contrast, my father and older brother’s death would never allow them to help with the babysitting.
CHAOS
My boys occasionally assist with painter’s block. I love their chaotic application of paint, introducing wild corridors to explore. Then begins the fun journey of wrangling their chaos, inch by inch, until the painting evolves into something meaningful. For me, this collaboration epitomizes the adventure of painting: making sense out of chaos.
SENSE
This series of paintings was influenced by William Turner’s techniques of impasto, scumbling, glazing and his exploration of light. Each painting has multiple layers that will recreate the image in various lighting conditions. My attempt was to give each painting a life of its own that will grow and change over the course of the day. Each light source creates new universes in which the imagination can get lost.
acrylic on cotton canvas
10′ x 8′ (four 4′ x 5′ canvases)
Twin planets colliding creating life through the ages.
SOLD
acrylic on cotton canvas
10′ x 8′ (four 4′ x 5′ canvases)
Twin planets colliding creating life through the ages.
SOLD
acrylic on cotton canvas
5′ x 4′
Living in a world filled with individuals.
$3,800
acylic on cotton canvas
16′ x 5′ (four 4′ x 5′ canvases, three shown above)
Two opposing forces coming together to create one.
$9,800
acrylic on cotton canvas
(triptych: 5′ x 4′ canvases)
If only we could measure the energy of change.
$11,000
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ron Sandoval’s creative talents are inspired by his passion for paying attention to the small details and artful beauty of nature, little structures and odd mediums. His childhood dreams of floating fantasies like lilies in a fountain are recreated in his work as an artist, landscape and floral designer, where his imagination and depth of vision are suspended in his works. His breakout was his LACMA installation in 1990, where his recycled use of rose stems as a crucifix, sphere and box, caught the attention of the LA art world and catapulted him onto the Hollywood scene where his pioneering work influenced the floral design industry internationally. Fleurish, his acclaimed Los Angeles design studio on Beverly Blvd, attracted regular clients such as Quincy Jones, Yves Saint Laurent and Judy Knapp.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work concentrates on the mythology of process and the elements of nature. My installations’ emphasis is on the pockets of natural curiosities and the beauty of their materials. One can reflect, meditate and interact with the importance of recycling. Through this woven balance of mystery and ever changing nature, we can hear the message of “conserving the life of our earth.”
James Reyman is a artist and designer with a studio located in New York City. For more information, visit www.reymanstudio.com
oil on canvas
8’1″ x 6’1″
painted on 12 individual panels
reassembled by the artist
1993
$6,000
oil on canvas
48 x 48 inches
$5,000
Brazilian-born Silvia Poloto is an accomplished artist working in a range of visual disciplines. She is known for her lively abstract canvases and mixed-media sculptures. Recognized for her dynamic compositions and color sensibility, Poloto exploits a vibrant visual vocabulary of boldness and subtlety. Her deftly handled juxtapositions unfold in rich, textured hues and expressive gesture. The result is a body of work characterized by equal amounts of surprise, playfulness and provocation. Her aesthetic choices engage the viewer on a visceral level.
Poloto has worked in a variety of media, including photography, sculpture, painting and video. Elements of each of these media find their home in her current work.
While the Bay Area is her current home, her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad, including United Arab Emirates, France, Spain, Jordania, Italy, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and China among others.
In the Bay Area, her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Italian American Museum and the DeYoung Museum, where she was an artist-in-residence. Poloto’s work has been acquired by more than 80 institutional and corporate collections around the US and by more than 900 private collectors around the world.
For more information, see Silvia Poloto’s website, www.poloto.com.
Acrylic on wood panel
48″ x 120″
$12,000
digital photography on aluminum
edition of 10
36 x 36 inches
$4,500
(also available other sizes)
digital photography on aluminum
edition of 10
54 x 44 inches
$7,200
(also available other sizes)
digital photography on aluminum
edition of 10
54 x 44 inches
$7,200
(also available other sizes)
overall, 74 x 74 inches
9 individual panels, 22″ x 22″ x 2.5″ each
digital photography printed on watercolor paper,
mounted on wood panel & covered with resin, sanded; edition of 10
$13,500
$1,500 each piece individually
digital photography on aluminum
20″ x 83″
$6,800
Acrylic on wood panel
48″ x 120″
$12,000
Nathan Richard Phelps recently completed a mural for Terra (see detail below).
Nathan Richard Phelps is a contemporary artist living and working in San Francisco. Born in 1976 outside Redding California and son of a Baptist pastor, he began making art in his early 20’s while living in a VW bus and taking wilderness survival classes. His art making process began with patterns in sketch books, then paintings and eventually room sized installations he calls Wall Drawings. His work has been featured at the Pasadena Art Museum and and the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown San Diego. Phelps has exhibited extensively on the West Coast, most notably with Robert Berman at his Bergamot Station gallery in Santa Monica. In 2005 Phelps lived in Amsterdam Holland where he exhibited with Maartin deVlieger at the 3rd gallery on Prinsengracht. In 2016, Phelps exhibited his work in New York, Amsterdam and Melbourne.
“One of the things I love about drawing is it’s raw. Behind most paintings is a drawing, a sketch, some underlying structure that holds the work together. Drawing is very close to the birthplace of creativity. It’s a fundamental beginning to all of the visual arts but I like viewing it as an end in itself. My art could have been made in ancient times with the same tools I have now, but because I’m here, what comes out is specific to this time now.
“The work is spontaneous and intuitive which gives me an insight into aspects of my mind I can only get access to by doing it. I look at these drawings as an exploration of consciousness. I find if I draw work that is seductive, my desire to engage it intensifies. When I come up against the limitations of the work, that becomes the edge of my perception, and I want to go further. I use everything I have in my toolbox to go as deeply as I can. I’m hoping to illuminate the dark places of my mind and the finished drawing is an artifact of the process.” ~ Phelps 2019
To see more of his work and to contact the artist: Nathan Richard Phelps website.
ink on paper, 2013
36 x 24 inches
$1,250 (framed)
ink on paper, 2013
18 x 24 inches
sold
ink on paper, 2015
18 x 24 inches
$750 (framed)
Detail of mural at Terra Gallery
San Francisco artist Stephanie Peek’s paintings have been exhibited in both national and international galleries and museums. She graduated with an MFA in painting from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA in Art History from Wellesley College, Boston. She has taught painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, Diablo Valley College, Academy of Art University, Dominican University in San Rafael, California, and has been a visiting lecturer at University of California at Berkeley.
Her awards and honors include Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome, Borso di Studio in Florence, Italy; J. Ruth Kelsey Travel Grant; Susan B. Irwin Scholarship in the Visual Arts; a Virginia McPheter-Stoltz Fellowship and was nominated for the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship and the SECA award at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Peek’s paintings and artists’ books have been exhibited at the Contemporary Museum of Art in Prato, Italy; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, San Diego; the Museo Italo-Americano, San Francisco; and the Oakland Museum of California. Her artists’ books are in the collections of the Library of Congress of the United States, the New York Public Library, Harvard and Stanford Universities and the University of California at Berkeley, as well as many private collectors nationally and internationally.
“Reflecting the anxiety of abundance, I have floated tulips, roses and other flowers from 17th century still life paintings through the dark smoky atmosphere of my earlier paintings of night gardens. The dramatic light and rich colors refer to the work of Dutch painter Rachel Ruysch. The softer, lighter paintings reflect the melancholy of early 18th century French painter Jean Antoine Watteau. Suspended in silence, flowers speak for me – of fragile beauty and the ephemeral nature of worldly delights. I find that painting can be a site of meditation, suspending time, making time irrelevant, and can put me in touch with that which does not decay.”
For more information, visit the artist’s website: www.stephaniepeek.com/
View her full resume/CV here: Stephanie Peek
For more information on these paintings, please contact: Terra Gallery
2011
oil on canvas
80 x 78 x 2 inches
$22,500
2014
oil on canvas
80 x 78 x 2 inches
$22,500
Born in Iran in 1962, Yari Ostovany moved to the United States at the age of 16 and pursued his studies in Art first at the University of Nevada – Reno and then at the San Francisco Art institute where he received his MFA in 1995. He has has exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally, and is the recipient of Sierra Arts Endowment Grant, Craig Sheppard Memorial Grant and Sierra Nevada Arts Foundation Grant. Recent solo exhibitions include The Yard: Columbus Circle in New York, Stanford Art Spaces at Stanford University, Far Out Gallery in San Francisco, Rebecca Molayem Gallery in Los Angeles and Aria Gallery in Tehran, Iran.
Works are made over time with layers upon layers of thick and thin washes and glazes, providing both luminous and opaque passages. Often starting with gestural marks, these solid forms then dissolve as the layers explode and implode by adding, rubbing out, reapplying, scouring into, and scraping away. The practice of going back and forth only stops when Ostovany senses the whole has become greater that the sum of its parts.
“I see abstraction as representational insofar as it is a representation of a psychic state, not an external reality. The trajectories in contemporary painting in which my work belongs range from Abstract Expressionism in the west to Persian, Taoist, and Zen aesthetic sensibilities in the East, and other perennial visionary paths of wisdom.”
His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain, Connecticut), Pasargad Bank Museum (Tehran, Iran), Chateau d’Orquevaux (Champagne-Ardenne, France), Permanent Collection of the University of Nevada – Reno Art Department and is represented by Foundation Behram Bakhtiar in France, Artscoops in Lebanon, Art Represent, Emergeast, and Ideel Art in London UK.
For more information, visit the artist’s website: www.yariostovany.com
Contact: Yari Ostovany
Oil on Canvas
48 x 36 inches (122 x 91 cm)
$6,100
Oil on Canvas
72 x 72 inches (183 x 183 cm)
$16,000
Oil on Canvas
54 x 50 inches (137 x 127 cm)
$10,000
Oil on Canvas
40 x 90 inches (102 x 229 cm)
$12,000
Oil on Canvas
48 x 35 inches (122 x 89 cm)
$5,700
Oil on Canvas
90 x 48 inches (229 x 121 cm)
$13,000
hekla Hammond is a masterful painter who cares deeply about the world around her and whose imagery imparts richly nuanced and intelligent narratives. Her vision transcends the purely physical. With intuitive color patterns and subtle layering techniques, Hammond leads the viewer gradually into stillness and quiet emotion and to find space and peace in the work. Hammond holds B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the University of California at Santa Barbara and an M.A. degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. She has recently exhibited at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, the Napa Valley Museum, Cal Arts in Valencia, the San Francisco Art Institute and the Richmond Art Center.
THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING
Strength, stability, courage, resoluteness, spirit. These are characteristics associated with the word backbone. We’re told to stand up straight. We believe that people with backbone have character. In time, we come to understand that a strong backbone is not rigid, but includes flexibility and grace. In the visual language of painting, the image of a backbone can expand the expressive possibilities of the word. Meaning is layered so that the exploration of the image is at once personal and universal, powerful and fragile, comprehensible and mysterious. ~ Thekla Hammond Thekla Hammond pays homage to Wallace Steven’s poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by painting thirteen ways of looking at a backbone. The series develops a painterly narrative about seeing, making an image, and creating a metaphor. It seeks to address Steven’s dilemma about which to prefer, “The beauty of inflections/Or the beauty of innuendoes.” Mettle means spirit, especially as regards honor or fortitude, words we relate to the backbone. In the paintings Mettle No. 3 and Mettle No. 4 and Mettle No. 8 the image is set in an epic landscape. Nature and backbones both connote strength, seem permanent, but both are subject to misuse, erosion, failure. The spine floats over the horizon, imposed and imposing, painted onto the surface of the landscape. Questions of scale become inevitable, for instance, how do we view the relationship between the size of a human backbone and the spine of a mountain range? In Water Bones, the four basic elements become both the source and the context for the spine. The principles of our physical universe unite with the mainstay of our human physical being. Multiple images begin to suggest movement as a source of our strength. The power of paint, the magic of causing an image to emerge from the pigment itself, is much the central subject of Lissom 3. In this painting the process makes the vision at once more defined and more abstract. The vertebrae are fewer but larger, and can be seen to be flexible and supple, nimble and agile.
HOLDING IT LIGHTLY
Hammond evokes ethereal, dreamlike spaces in her recent body of atmospheric paintings, Holding It Lightly. In Hope, Tenderness, Grace and Solace, she addresses issues of tension and balance; and the formal relationship of line to form, of surface to deep space, of drawing to color, of structure to mark-making. These dramatic works suggest sky, ocean, and celestial images in a wondrous palette of passionate color.
A FULL LIFE STORY
Thekla Hammond: “The opening image in Jim Crace’s novel Harvest began to haunt me. There is a fire, seen from a distance, on a cold, frosty autumn day. The fire and the smoke are both beautiful and ominous, and they signal the end of the way of life for people living on a manor in medieval England. I wanted to paint this image, to see it and to explore its meaning. The exploration embraced the seemingly contrary and opposite characteristics that comprise a full life story: beauty and ugliness, safety and danger, passion and reserve, good and evil, sacred and profane, love and hate, life and death.”
Oil on canvas
60″ x 60″
$5,700
Oil on canvas
80″ x 60″
$7,000
Oil on canvas
60″ x 48″
$5,400
Oil on canvas
66″ x 72″
$9,000
Oil on canvas
50″ x 72″
$7,000
Oil on canvas
60″ x 72″
$8,500
Oil on canvas
36″ x 20″
$2,400
Oil on canvas
59″ x 48″
$6,000
Oil on canvas
96″ x 24″
$6,000
oil on panel, 2015
72″ x 48″
$13,000
oil on panel, 2015
72″ x 48″
$13,000
oil on panel, 2015
72″ x 48″
$13,000
oil on panel, 2016
60″ x 120″
$13,000
oil on panel, 2016
60″ x 60″
$13,000
SHERMAN NOBLEMAN (1941 – 2015)
Sherman Nobleman uses a variety of methods to create his textural, minimalist works. The effect is very subtle, leading the viewer into a quiet meditation on the expressive quality of each work. His paintings are steeped in emotion, reflective thought and beauty, allowing space for subjective interpretation. An extension of his abstract expressionist predecessors, he seeks not to teach or convey a message, but to allow the viewer a moment to pause, reflect and interpret.
Nobleman’s work has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. He had many solo and group exhibitions, and awards were numerous. His paintings are included in private and public collections, including Auberge du Soleil (Rutherford, California), The Napa Valley Community Foundation (Napa, California), Cisco Systems (San Jose, California), and Weidenhammer Systems Corporation (Wyomissing, Pennsylvania).
Click here to visit artist’s website. For more information on these paintings, contact: Kristina Nobleman
Diptych
Mixed media on canvas
48 x 72 inches
$14,500
Mixed media on canvas
54 x 54 inches
$14,000
Mixed media on canvas
48 x 72 inches
$15,000
Mixed media on canvas
48 x 72 inches
$15,000
Mixed media on panel
54 x 48 inches
$13,500
Mixed media on panel
54 x 54 inches
$14,000
Julie V. Garner is a self-taught, mixed media artist working primarily with photographs. Using a technique derived from the study of tapestry weaving, she combines multiple photos taken from a variety of perspectives to create a kinetic version of the original scene.
STATEMENT
Photography allows me to capture a scene. The process of cutting up and reconstructing that scene through weaving causes me to linger over every detail and get to know it well. In this way the street or building or field becomes a part of me and I feel deeply connected to it. Sense of place is extremely important to me and is a strong motivator for making my art.
I am particularly drawn to places that have been built or altered by humans. How people change their environment and then how that environment affects behavior has interested me for many years. It led me to become a specialist in Human Factors, a field I remain self-employed in. This affords me access to a wide variety of settings I may not have had the opportunity to visit otherwise, from prisons to factories to high tech settings and everything in between. I notice that each of them embodies it’s own character and exudes it’s own influence on those who enter. In each weaving I try to reflect some of that character, as I perceive it.
Each artwork involves several photographs taken from multiple angles and, if possible, different heights (e.g. from a stairway or parking structure). “Back Story” incorporates twenty-two separate images while most of the others involve approximately ten to fifteen. Once the final images are selected I print two of each and cut them into 3/8” strips which become the warp and weft. Use of perspective distortions enables me to achieve a sense of kineticism.
For more information, visit the artist’s website: www.julievgarner.com.
Contact: Julie V. Garner
2010
woven photograph
32 x 72 inches (framed)
$3,000
2008
woven photograph
36 x 44 inches (framed)
$1,800
2012
woven photograph
21 x 55 inches (framed)
$1,800
2008
woven photograph
26 x 44 inches (framed)
$1,800
Jimi Gleason has been exhibiting bold, reductive abstract pieces since the mid-80’s and has changed the face of contemporary minimalism. Each work reveals a high level of technical precision. He meticulously drags numerous gossamer layers of pearlescent acrylic paint down and across the canvas. Colors, textures, tones and subtleties emerge, meld and shift as light and viewer perspective change. Each painting is never the same from one moment to another. The effect is enigmatic, ethereal and emotionally resonant. The artist feels that his paintings are physical responses to motion, that each is “a frozen moment for those who wish to ponder the visual riddle I offer them.” Jimi Gleason was raised near Newport Beach, California, and received his BA from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He then spent a brief period of study at the San Francisco Art Institute. Following an extended period in New York City, he returned to California and soon met Ed Moses, with whom he has worked as a studio assistant for nearly seven years. Now shown in group and solo exhibitions nationwide, his own work can be found in a large and growing number of public and private collections.
Acrylic on Canvas
2004
NFS
Looking at a painting by Mark Erickson is an experience in color and movement. His paintings express spontaneous unchecked energy, allowing viewers to sense the artist’s creative process and his physical involvement with the canvas. Imagery exists for the viewers imagination, it moves and spreads across the canvas in liquid fury.
Abstract Expressionism was once a groundbreaking revolution in American art in the 1940s and 1950s and it has always been a rich tradition and point of departure for Erickson. Past influences are clearly felt, yet a fresh approach is found in his recent paintings. The direction is Erickson’s own and the paintings are fresh, new and completely contemporary. Mark’s paintings are decidedly abstract landscapes and the terrain traveled is uncharted territory. Each painting is another story to tell.
Mark Erickson was born in Hollywood, California and now lives and works with his wife Elena in their Oakland and Venice studios in California. They often exhibit together. Mark has exhibited his work in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New Orleans and Miami. His collectors come from across the U.S., as well as Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, England, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia.
Mark just completed a manuscript for a book, “An Aviator’s Tale – The Men From Painted Woods.” It covers the life of his father, Ernest Anders Erickson, during his Air Corps days in England in 1944 and incorporates Mark’s Grandfather Frank Erickson, a fortunate survivor of the ‘Lost Battalion’ during the First World War. His Uncle Ernest Julius Erickson rounds out the story and his times in the American Expeditionary Force. It is a family tale of heroic encounters with history. At present, Mark is seeking a publisher and would be pleased to be contacted in that regard. A fully illustrated manuscript/PDF can be read at:
“An Aviator’s Tale – The Men From Painted Woods.”
For more information on Mark Erickson or to see other painting images, go to his website: www.markerickson.com.
View Mark’s resume/CV here.
mixed media on steel and wood panel
40 by 36 inches
$4,500
mixed media on steel & wood panel
24 x 24 inches
$1,500
mixed media on steel & wood panel
24 x 24 inches
$1,500
mixed media on canvas
14 x 14 inches
$800
acrylic on canvas
63 x 34 inches
$3,500
acrylic on canvas
60 x 24 inches
$2,500
acrylic on canvas
48 x 48 inches
$3,500
mixed media on canvas
50 x 48 inches
$5,000
acrylic on canvas
40 x 30 inches
$2,500
oil & enamel on canvasl
12 x 12 inches
$800
mixed media on steel & wood panel
40 x 30 inches
$2,500
mixed media on steel & wood panel
40 x 30 inches
$2,500
collage on wood panel
40 x 30 inches
$3,000
mixed media & collage on wood panel
14 x 11 inches
$900
mixed media on canvas
80 x 60 inches
$5,000
Elena Erickson grew up in the country-side of northern Switzerland in the village of Safenwil. Outside of city life and influences, the forest surrounded her home, and from her youth, most life adventures were motivated by nature. Moving later to the Bay Area in California and close the ocean’s edge, the outdoors form the imagery in the paintings she is currently creating.
“While painting I often experience that confidence and no fear of loss is an essential part of the process. The more natural the movement, the more natural the look of the surface. It’s an adventure through different colors and shapes, inspirations and observations, where I can pick the parts that speak to me the most, and put them together in the search of harmony. The focus on the practice of creating matters. It’s important to me to work continuously, so the desired image can come forth. I strongly believe there’s always something blossoming from something else, and following the directions of your own light, will cast new shadows along the way. Ultimately it’s also important to remember to have fun and to enjoy the flow of color.”
Elena paints with the history of painting behind her, like all painters have, but the age of today where technology rules, painting must flourish beyond the coldness of staring at lit screens. It again becomes a very personal experience. A less traveled avenue to follow, but where the roads intersect, painting initiates an important career in which to go. Willem de Kooning once said, “I think I’m painting a picture of two women, but it may turn out to be a landscape.” – Or even a view out of a window. For more information on Elena or to view other painting images, go to her website at www.elenaerickson.com
Cheryl DeCinces Carter, a California native, was born in Los Angeles and has resided in the Bay Area for over three decades. Primarily a painter of abstract canvases, she studied photography and painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. The artist began her painting journey in the style of photorealism, eventually turning to non-representational painting as a more direct way to impart emotional and spiritual notions. She was strongly influenced and mentored by master painter Arnold Mesches at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and primarily identifies with the LA abstract movement. Carter especially enjoys experimenting with the monotype process, discovering new forms and ideas on paper.
Carter has participated in multiple museum shows, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artist’s Gallery. She has exhibited internationally; most recently, her work has been shown in Japan and is on permanent display at the Royal Thailand National Museum. Her canvases and paper pieces are in numerous private and corporate collections.
Carter prefers not to describe the work, allowing viewers to come up with their own impression and conclusion. For more information on the paintings, please contact www.cheryldecincescarter.com
oil on canvas
48 by 36 inches
$4,500
oil on canvas
72 x 48 inches
$7,500
oil on canvas
48 x 48 inches
$5,000
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