4th Annual Catalina: The Wild Side Art Show and Sale
2014-07-30
Catalina Island Conservancy
The 2014 Catalina: The Wild Side Art Show & Sale will be crossing the channel to share the amazing works with even more lovers of Catalina plein air art. The Show and Sale will be held Sunday, October 26, 2014 at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club.
A passion for Catalina Island and plein air art come together to create an extraordinary afternoon. The show features 10 nationally acclaimed plein air artists, who will display their interpretations of Catalina's rugged wildlands and scenic beauty. Proceeds from the sale of these unique paintings support the growth of a permanent collection of plein air artwork that documents the Island's "wild side" and the Catalina Island Conservancy's restoration efforts.
Visit our website to register or call Kathryn at (562) 437-8555, ext. 239.
The Artists
Kenn Backhaus
A Wisconsin native, Kenn Backhaus spent much of his childhood on the family farm. His love of nature became the catalyst for his art. After graduating from the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee in 1973, Kenn began a career in design and illustration. Although he received many awards and commercial success, Kenn longed to paint the great outdoors.
With his developing interest in the historic traditions of plein air painting, Kenn decided in 1984, to devote more time to his passion for painting and the love of the outdoors. He found that capturing true color, value, atmosphere and the mood of a subject was best done on location or through direct observation. He has also discovered the importance of his studio time in union with his outdoor experiences and enjoys the challenges in both environments. His passion for painting has broadened his subject matter to include not only landscapes, but also figurative, portrait, still life and nature work. When asked what he likes to paint, Kenn's answer is, "Anything under the sun and moon is fair game."
Kenn has been featured in numerous art publications and books. His works have been juried into many shows across the country and his paintings have been bestowed with many honors including the prestigious Best of Show, Collectors Choice and Artists Choices awards. He regularly serves as an acceptance juror and awards judge for many shows around the country.
Bye Bitney
Bye Bitney is a contemporary artist and fourth generation Montanan. A largely self-taught painter, he began showing in major galleries at age 22. Art critics praised his keen draftsman's eye and expert use of muted colors. His works include portraits, figural work, landscapes and still lifes. Bye's paintings feature ocean and sky, people, animals and flowers.
Bye says he learned the art of painting largely through independent study based on a large collection of fine art books, which are among his most cherished possessions. He has also studied the works of many favorite 19th and 20th century representational and impressionistic painters.
He says he feels fortunate to earn his living by doing something that is so much fun, and that the biggest challenge in painting is satisfying his own expectations. Bye lives on the western shore of Flathead Lake, Montana, with his wife Kay.
John Budicin
John Budicin was born in Italy and moved to Southern California at age 11. After several years as a commercial artist and freelance illustrator, John decided to pursue his dream of becoming a plein air artist after his employer moved out of state.
He loves to paint directly from nature and works outdoors almost every day. John paints many of his paintings close to his home in San Bernardino, California.
In addition to being a dedicated painter, John teaches workshops across the United States for several weeks each year. He has also taught workshops in Umbria and Tuscany, Italy. John is a signature member of the Plein Air Painters of America and served as its president from 2005 to 2007.
John Cosby
Born in Hollywood in 1955, John Cosby was raised in the West. He began to draw and paint at an early age and his grandmother was an oil painter. John also started traveling at an early age. At 18, he was hired as a communications advanceman for President Nixon and began to travel the globe, serving through the Ford Administration. He was captivated by the great works of art he encountered.
After leaving the White House,John began his art career while sailing up and down the eastern seaboard for three years with a friend. After returning to California, he began painting the sea and landscape of coastal California.
His success as a painter quickly followed.John lives in Paso Robles, California, where he has a studio, and works on location around the world. He was a founding board member of the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association and is a signature member of California Art Club. He was also a founder of the Laguna Beach Plein Air Painting Invitational held at the Laguna Art Museum.
Andy Evansen
Andy Evansen began painting watercolors in the mid-1990s, is largely self-taught, and has studied with such well-known watercolorists as Skip Lawrence, Eric Weigardt and Alvaro Castagnet. He served as president of the Minnesota Watercolor Society from 2004 to 2006 and teaches workshops around the United States. Evansen’s paintings have appeared on the cover of American Artist's Watercolor, International Artist and American Art Collector. He wrote an article about a trip to China that was published in American Artist called "Plein Air Painting in the Far East."
He took part in Coleman Fine Art's “Wet Paint 2007” plein-air event, where four artists from around the country were invited to paint the city of Charleston, South Carolina, for a week. Evansen is the first watercolorist to participate in a Wild Side art show.
Kim Lordier
Native to the San Francisco Bay Area and a graduate of the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, Kim Lordier combines keen observation and sensitivity to create her award winning landscapes. After college, Lordier flew for a major air carrier, experiencing many domestic and foreign locales, while keeping up with painting and portraiture. After the events of September 2001, she turned to painting full time.
Inspired by the turn-of-the-century California Impressionists and Tonalists, Kim paints in the plein air tradition. Fascinated with California's unique atmospheric qualities, Kim strives to capture the beauty, depth and energy of the land and sea. She is currently a Signature member of the Laguna Plein Air Painters, the Pastel Society of America, a Distinguished Pastelist in the Pastel Society of the West Coast, and Artist Member of the California Art Club.
Joe Paquet
Joseph Paquet, while pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York, had the good fortune of finding a mentor in John Foote, who opened his eyes to the joys of drawing the human figure. After graduating, Joe met another major influence in his life, John Osborne, who was uniquely gifted in producing convincing landscape paintings from memory. Osborne believed a landscape painting should begin on location, but that its poetic essence should be completed in the solitude of the artist’s studio.
Joe experienced a demanding and rewarding apprenticeship, in which he learned to fuse field studies with the image he could see in his mind’s eye. To summarize this experience, he explains, “The intellectual process became married to the intuitive. Paint what you know well as what you see. If I have the need or desire to move a mountain, add a figure or change the course of a river, I can do so. I am no longer shackled to nature. Now, I am painting my picture.” Joe teaches and paints at Hurinenko and Paquet Studio in St. Paul, Minnesota.
He has been featured in Washington Post Sunday Magazine, The Artist, American Artist and Plein Air Magazine. Paquet’s recent awards include both Artists’ Choice and Collectors’ Choice from the 2007 Laguna Beach Plein Air Invitational as well as the 2008 Alden Bryan Memorial Prize from the Salmagundi Club of New York and the First Place in Landscape from the Richeson 75: Artist’s Choice Competition.
Joe is a Signature Member of the Plein Air Painters of America, The Salmagundi Club and an out-of-state artist member of the California Art Club.
Jesse Powell
Jesse Powell was born in 1977 in Los Angeles, California. He has lived most of his life on the California coast, where he has developed a deep attachment and respect for a rapidly disappearing natural landscape. A third generation artist, Jesse's love for art stemmed at an early age, mostly from the influence of his father, nationally recognized artist John Powell. He now resides in Carmel, CA.
Jesse graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree in painting and drawing, and went on to study Russian Impressionism in the Republic of Georgia under the tutelage of Nicholai Dubovik, Ilya Yatsenko, and John Wurdeman. His education has continued with numerous trips to the Scottsdale Artist School to study with painters such as Matt Smith, George Strickland, and Kenn Backhaus.
He is an artist member of the Oil Painters of America and the American Impressionist Society and a Signature Member of the California Art Club and the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association.
Matt Smith
Matt Smith was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1960 and moved to Arizona at a young age. He later moved to Europe, where he lived in France and Switzerland. Matt has also painted in Germany, Austria and Italy, but has spent most of his life in Arizona, where he has a deep attachment and respect for the Sonoran Desert.
Matt graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting. He studied the traditional styles of landscapes masters such as Maynard Dixon, William Herbert Dunton and Edgar Payne.
He can often be found painting plein air from southern Arizona to the Canadian Rockies, the California coast to the mountains of Colorado. Matt says he is especially inspired by the untouched landscapes of the American West.
Matt is a signature member of Plein Air Painters of America. He lives in Arizona with his wife, Tracy, who is also a painter.
Kate Starling
Kate Starling is an oil painter who lives and works in the canyons of southern Utah. Educated in geology, she spent years working outside as a geologist and National Park ranger. After formal academic art training in the 1980's she devoted her work to painting the landscape. Schooled in the importance of direct painting from life she has spent years painting outside, learning the way light plays on the land. Now she splits her time between the roadways and trails surrounding her home and the studio.
Starling's paintings portray the natural world and focus on communicating a sense of place, atmosphere and light, retaining the immediacy of the painting experience. She knows the strength of emotion that the landscape seen in a particular light can trigger in her - she strives to paint in such a way that memory and emotion are triggered in the people who see her work.