Bay Area - More Art

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Building up many layers of color in oil paint and cold wax medium, Valerie then used scrapers to reveal the tree trunks in an abstract landscape. Warm orange and yellow trees standing in front of a cool blue and green background. Heavy texture complements the expressionist palette. The piece is part of a series of three works. Although Valerie did not create them as triptych, the three hang well close together.

About the Artist
Valerie Berkely uses her finger tips as brushes to create her abstract paintings. For Valerie, the art is all about the process, the paint, her mood, and the moment. She admires the artist Wolf Kahn, who once said, “the picture is the conclusion of an experiment in which the hint of an image becomes actuality." Like Kahn, Valerie’s paintings combine pictorial landscapes with painterly abstraction. The vibrant primary colors capture the hues of the sun rising and setting, and the texture of her fingers across the surface divides sea, land, and sky. There is something very dreamy about these works, exemplified by their color, texture, and atmospheric quality. Valerie’s first “art epiphany” was seeing Seurat's La Grande Jatte at the Art Institute of Chicago. “Bowled me over! I actually fell down. And I knew I was to become a painter.”

Words that describe this painting: woods, forest, trees, nature, expressionism, nature, non-representational, oil painting, blue

Bare Trees...

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Willets are usually at the edge of the surf, poking into the wet sand as they follow each wave in and out. This one, when I came on him, was standing above th...

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While the artist painted this scene from life, the aroma of lavender filled the studio. "The atmosphere seemed to calm the storms of the day," Pamela recalls....

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This painting is about combining realism, abstraction, color, spontaneity - all of the things that I think make for an exciting and engaging piece of art.

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Sometimes these handsome ducks, who feed at the Santa Barbara Bird Refuge by plowing through the water with their bills open, take a break from shoveling and ...

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This is an impressionistic painting of light filtering in through cypress trees in a river. The overall hues in the painting are cool blues and greyed violets...

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This is my kind of garden; in full bloom, and crammed with a splendid variety of pretty things. The subject matter delights me not only because I love gardens...

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I've painted this scene a couple of times before. There a lots of dead pines facing the channel that separates the coast of Maine from Grand Manan Island, exc...

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The Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington State provided the inspiration for this semi-abstract landscape painting. A rug...

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The Coquitlam River near Jo's home in British Columbia is a favorite painting subject. She enjoys regularly walking the riverbanks from one end to the other w...

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Naoko says that when she came upon this scene, the willow tree - with its leaves turned yellow - looked like a huge sweet candied ginger. "Warm and transparen...

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A lone wolf trots in the snow, encircled with a red halo. In the background, herring swim among a flower pattern, inspired from her childhood memories growing...

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This is another view of Campobello Island. I was inspired by the long shadows created in the late afternoon light and by the fact that it looks untouched by h...

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The setting is the Corner Deli on Kenmare Street in Soho, New York, across the street from Lt. Petrosino Square. I was interested i...

Artist Comments
Building up many layers of color in oil paint and cold wax medium, Valerie then used scrapers to reveal the tree trunks in an abstract landscape. Warm orange and yellow trees standing in front of a cool blue and green background. Heavy texture complements the expressionist palette. The piece is part of a series of three works. Although Valerie did not create them as triptych, the three hang well close together.

About the Artist
Valerie Berkely uses her finger tips as brushes to create her abstract paintings. For Valerie, the art is all about the process, the paint, her mood, and the moment. She admires the artist Wolf Kahn, who once said, “the picture is the conclusion of an experiment in which the hint of an image becomes actuality." Like Kahn, Valerie’s paintings combine pictorial landscapes with painterly abstraction. The vibrant primary colors capture the hues of the sun rising and setting, and the texture of her fingers across the surface divides sea, land, and sky. There is something very dreamy about these works, exemplified by their color, texture, and atmospheric quality. Valerie’s first “art epiphany” was seeing Seurat's La Grande Jatte at the Art Institute of Chicago. “Bowled me over! I actually fell down. And I knew I was to become a painter.”

Words that describe this painting: woods, forest, trees, nature, expressionism, nature, non-representational, oil painting, blue

Bare Trees...

Artist Comments
"Aura of Orange" was painted from life alla prima style, meaning all in one sitting. Pamela enjoys painting at an energetic pace, which gives her work a loose...

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Suzanne revisited a site and theme found in a previous work, "Solar Event over Marsh and Fen." However, she changed the tone of this painting to reflect the c...

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Kent Sullivan draws ideas for paintings from a variety of sources - plein air sessions, photography, videos, memory, and sketches...

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Native Americans call the month of February the Hunger Moon. Outside my studio windows, the February sun is hidden behind an overcas...

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This piece is one of two images of Metamorphosis. This one is the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The second painting, Metamorphosis I, is th...

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This painting was inspired by a grove of birch trees on the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island, located on Puget Sound in the State of Washington. The reser...

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Inspired by spring gardens in Southern California.

About the Artist
Inspired by the great Impressionist painters, Claudia uses paint emotionally to...

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Hadley encountered this heart-shaped arrangement of candles during San Francisco's Day of the Dead Festival of Altars. "Flowers, a photograph and colorful candles were lovingly placed on the ground in a park with many other personal altars...

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Crystal says this painting was inspired by the beautiful light and shadows after a rare desert snowstorm. She used a limited palette of blues and white and an...

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Hadley encountered this heart-shaped arrangement of candles during San Francisco's Day of the Dead Festival of Altars. "Flowers, a photograph and colorful candles were lovingly placed on the ground in a park with many other personal altars...

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A sophisticated, dreamlike view of divergent paths one can take. The middle path appearing as a painting within a painting...

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This imagined landscape captures the drama of crashing waves, or a desert rock face against a cloudy sky. I worked with a seascape ...

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Tara took the reference photo of this sage filled desert landscape while living in New Mexico. To prepare the canvas, she used a warm peach color as her underpainting and layered swatches of a deep blue collage...

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Crystal DiPietro's paintings start with hikes in remote places. She takes many photographs while out in nature. After every trip, Crystal immediately goes th...

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Valerie Berkely looks for stories in her travels as inspiration for her abstracted landscapes. She says of this calm scene, Just offshore there lies a slip of land along the lake known as The Point...