There And Back Again

Due to the pandemic no formal reception is scheduled but we hope to be able to host a closing reception. Visitors are welcome during gallery hours with social distancing and wearing masks.

Tues-Fri  12-5

Sat 11-3

Closed Sun-Mon

Private viewing times can be scheduled through this link.

Group exhibition featuring five artists who each process grief through their art in unique ways.

Studio Channel Islands is putting together an exhibition in response to that most human of emotions - loss. This exhibition presents the work of five artists who are responding to grief through the creation of beautiful and subtle works. Three of the artists are dealing with loss on an the individual level, their work reflects a personal journey and two of the artists are dealing with loss at the community or international scale.

I was invited to exhibit the portraits I painted for the families who lost loved ones in the mass shooting at Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, CA, Nov. 7, 2018. You can see the works here. I am also incorporating some new abstract work into my display that references the devastating wild fires that happened right after the shooting. My theme is about the loss to our community, the double tragedies we endured.

You can view a short video about this work here.

I titled my part of the exhibition Fire And Ice, after this Robert Frost poem:

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

This poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963) was written and published in 1920, shortly after WWI , and speaks of two ways humans self-destruct, the probable ways we will cause our own demise..

Fire refers not only to flames but to desire and greed, crimes of passion and fury.

Ice in this poem symbolizes hatred, cold indifference and complacency.

The two events that my exhibit deals with (the mass shooting at The Borderline Bar & Grill and the Woolsey Fire which started 24 hours later) included both of these forms of destruction.

When these tragedies occurred in my own neighborhood of Thousand Oaks, CA, in November 2018

I felt the need to feel connected and to reach out to the people most affected.

Painting portraits of the young victims of the Borderline massacre was the only thing I could offer their grieving families, hoping the paintings might give them a little comfort.

Not all of the victims are included in this exhibition. There were 12 innocent people killed that night of November 7, 2018. Nine are represented here, thanks to their families lending back the portraits specifically for this show.

These portraits were created using my usual medium of pastel and my style of realism. While working on them they evoked many hours of extreme emotions so I wanted to go in a different direction for the fire pieces.

For the Fire series, I chose to focus purely on creating beauty out of destruction and experimenting with new materials and techniques. Fire not only kills but also creates new life, new beauty, new growth. Limiting my color palette to mostly black and white I added small touches of red and gold to reference this dichotomy. I wanted to create beautiful abstract pieces that are delicate and graceful yet born of flames. By torching stone paper and mounting it on cradled wood panels these works combine painting and sculpture in a way I found meditative and pleasing. Adding burnt wood pieces I collected near Ojai reinforced my belief that beauty can be found anywhere if we choose to notice it.

As I was putting the finishing touches on these works it became evident that my theme of Fire And Ice is unfortunately very timely … again.

Current events once more present us with plenty of Fire And Ice to either perish or create great change.

I hope we can all create beauty and love out of the flames and the hate, healing ourselves and our world in the process.