Piedmont artist finds sparkle in the ordinary
By Michael Singman-Aste
Correspondent
Posted: 09/01/2011 10:43:13 AM PDT
A figure lounges on a bench fashioned of twigs, reading a book, one leg stretched languidly. Around her, spring flowers bloom. An idyllic scene? Not exactly.
Piedmont artist Sylvia Fones was painting at Blake House in Kensington with the "Glover Group" last year when one of her colleagues, Teresa, brushed up against poison oak. She decided to rest, and Fones captured the scene in pastel. The resulting painting, "Teresa," earned her Honorable Mention in the Oakland Art Association's annual juried show at the John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, juried by Larry Wilson.
The Oakland Art Association is a nonprofit organization founded in 1957.
Fones describes painting outdoors, beginning around 10 a.m. and finishing in the early afternoon when the lighting has changed completely. Catching the light is not just a challenge, but part of the charm of painting en plein air.
She said, "You also get more sparkle because if you're painting the light as it moves you start to get the life of it. You begin to catch the weather ... And if you're able to capture that it's a much more interesting painting."
S. Newman of Oakland paints one piece a month. She said the first time she wasn't able to do that was in 1998-99 while working on a painting about the civilian toll of conflict in Bosnia. The reason: "I ended up getting a really bad case of poison oak in the middle of this," she explained.
She eventually did finish her oil painting,
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"Evacuation," which depicts refugees on foot, a few meager possessions loaded into carts. It was awarded first place in the Oakland Art Association show.
Newman had said previously of her work, "My objective is to use art as a means of unification. We all experience the mundane." While being a war refugee is neither mundane nor, at least in the United States, a common unifying experience, Newman said, "I do think that the whole notion of people having to move from one place to another and redefine who they are is pretty commonplace. There is a lot of displacement. 'Evacuation' is about displacement.
"Life is change. And people don't have a coping mechanism for that," Newman said.
Rick Nelson of Walnut Creek was awarded second place for "Mission Window," a photo he took in November at Mission San Antonio de Padua, the "Mission of the Sierras," located near King City.
Yin Marsh, who lives in Berkeley, took third place for "Wild," an acrylic painting of a horse, but more impressive is his impressionist painting of the Potala Palace in Tibet, also on display.
Besides Sylvia Fones, honorable mentions were awarded to Wenda Pyman of San Francisco for her photo "Fossil Ridge" and Gisela Volkmer of Moraga for her "Tidepool at Sea Ranch" watercolor.
The exhibit will be up through Sept. 9 in the Aspen Surgery Center at the John Muir Medical Center, 1601 Ygnacio Valley Road, Walnut Creek. For more information go to http://www.oaklandart.org.
