How The “Indefinitely Wild” Art Exhibition Impacted Me

In August 2023, I visited the UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art.

I immediately connected with so many of the paintings in it. I was working on painting a Laguna cove and wanting to learn how better my craft from the previous cove paintings I had made.

I walked around the exhibit for about an hour taking time to look at each piece. I wanted to learn what made these pieces good, what their strengths were. I decided that lighting was one of the most prominent strengths. It seemed that the artists had arranged the lighting for maximum glow and that the lighting itself was what created the focal points in many of the paintings.

In “Half Dome, Yosemite” the bright light orange golden hour sun hits Half Dome while the rest of the mountains are more cool toned in the shade. That put the glowing Half Dome the painting is named after as the focal point without making it larger or more detailed than the other mountains. It also created flow in the painting that the other small highlights of orange reflections harmonize and lead to the focal point. I see this painting as a masterpiece, which is interesting because the actual paint strokes themselves are not that detailed or precise. There is a looseness in the way the paint is applied and many details omitted such as clouds or foreground plants. Karl Yens simplified the view. He used artistry to define what mattered in this painting and what didn’t. I love how creative it is while remaining seemingly true to nature. That doesn’t just happen for a scene to be arranged so finely and beautifully. Nature made the composition, but the artist needed to see and choose what to frame of it.

“Yosemite Falls from the Valley” is another example of this concept of light creating the focal point. I would usually assume that in a painting with such large trees, the trees would be the focal point. But light created a more compelling reason to look to an area of the piece and once your eyes reach there, you can almost see the faint water moving and hear the sound of the mist.

I saw “Yosemite Falls from the Valley” before going to Yosemite and it made me really want to go there. Now it reminds me of that wonderful feeling sitting in the grass and pine needles, alone in the forest being with God. The space divisions are truly lovely in this piece and it immediately draws the heart of everyone I’ve seen see it. My husband saw the postcard I had of it on our fridge and said, “You should paint things like that!”

“San Gorgonio in Spring” is yet another example of how this exhibit taught me light can be a focal point with the horizon and lit trails leading right up to the snowy mountain peak. It also has such happy glowy dessert plants in the foreground with them, the rocks, and their shadows becoming a rhythmic interplay it is scrumptious.

But even the ones less light oriented confirmed and taught me ideas about art. This photograph of “Rugged Peaks” does not at all do it justice. It is a huge painting probably close to four feet by four feet and the faint red streaks on the mountains are vivid red stripes in person. You truly understand the size of these peaks and feel humble like the figure in the middle foreground looking up at them. Even large trees, boulders, and the teal lake are small before the mountain.

Not only did I see such a large focal point, but I was also shown how to have a painting that gently thrusts you towards a small focal point.

“The Weekend” amazes me in its ability to make the sky simple while beautiful and shape the clouds to guide the heart towards that little tent. There is just a sliver of ocean and it almost is tantalizing like a secret or something just out of reach. The diagonal dirrections of the clouds show me how to create meaning and beauty through the items already visible and presented in a scene.

“Mid-Winter, Coronado Beach” reminded me what time period these paintings were made it. Fashion changes much more than nature. And it also solved a specific quandary I had been having about how to paint sand. I didn’t want too much texture or a solid patch of color and painting struck a wonderful balance.

“Bend of the River” reminded me of many of the ordinary views I see hiking around Orange County CA and showed me that what might not seem noteworthy can become an excellent painting. But this lesson was even further enforced from reading the plaque explaining that this specific bend of the river no longer exists. We need to document what seems ordinary through painting because it isn’t. Every time and place is different from what comes before and after.

The showstopper Guy Rose changed my way of seeing Eucalyptus trees forever. And isn’t that one of the highest goals of painting? I had always noticed them as they are one of what I call the trio of most common trees in OC (The other two are pine trees and palm trees). But I had not noticed how out of this world and hilarious Eucalyptus trees look. They are straight out of Dr. Seuss except they’re not. the spindly trunks that never seem to grow quite straight, the funny puffs of leaves that live in odd places that weigh down the trees even sometimes to the point of collapse. They are magical and he saw that.

The final painting that caught my heart and attention was also a Guy Rose. “Lifting Fog” was the ultimate masterpiece for someone working on local coastline and cove paintings. It has that depth of aqua, green, periwinkle, grey, and blue in the water. It carves the rocks and sand with the perfect balance of detail. It shines the rock in the reflections of the wet sand. It shows the distant shorelines literally swirling into the fog of the sky. The sky is solid yet also conveying cloud shapes. It has diagonal lines pointing to each other and is so calming.

And once you find things that resonate with your passion, they things they believed and loved will likely also. Reading Edgar Payne’s “Composition of Outdoor Painting” has been one of the most encouraging books yet because it feels like meeting a kindred spirit artist friend.

I wouldn’t mind owning a hard copy if someone is looking for a gift for me. But even greater to my heart is the gift that you care enough to read so much about my heart to get to this point. Please reach out to me and say hi, let me know what you think. I’d love to connect with you.