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PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
George Billis Gallery is pleased to present “A Solid Serenity: New Landscapes,” the gallery’s third exhibition of the painter’s work. The exhibition features Everett’s most recent body of large scale California landscape paintings and continues through October 9th.
Bruce Everett's medium to large scale landscape paintings of Southern California and the Central Coast are characterized by dramatic light with raking shadows, unusual vantage points, and inspired compositions. Everett’s reasons for painting the landscape are first and foremost out of a deep emotional need to paint what moves him. Seeing a powerful scene isn't enough - he needs to paint it to really grasp it, and in a way to be done with it. But what attracts him to a subject in the first place are the formal elements---the dynamics of the composition, the textures, the shapes, the subtlety of colors and the polarities and rhythms of light and dark. It all adds up to being "of the place"---a connection that can't be explained except by painting it. It is important to him to accurately represent what he experiences. “I don't want to contrive a landscape so much as discover it,” he writes of his work.
There is an austere seriousness, and a recognition of an essential, profound intelligence in our natural environment in these paintings. Roads appear frequently, but never as a conscious symbol or metaphor. They help to define the contours of the landscape, and also serve to make the viewer feel present, and see through the artist’s eyes. They also make a statement about the presence of humanity in an otherwise uninhabited scene. Everett often combines both loose, painterly brushwork and a studied precise handling within the same painting, which directs the attention from the background to the foreground, and back again. Formal understandings aside, in the end, to marvel at our presence in the world is the true subject of Everett’s paintings.
Bruce Everett was born in Los Angeles but raised in the Midwest just north of Chicago. Being an only child, free to play on the bluffs and in the wooded ravines along the shore of Lake Michigan, most certainly contributed to his becoming a landscape painter. Although showing early artistic ability, he didn’t start painting until college. He received his MA from the University of Iowa, and his MFA in Painting from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He taught briefly at the University of Washington, Seattle. He then became a Professor of Art at California State University, Northridge from 1970 until retiring in 2005.
Everett has been exhibiting since 1968 and his work has been appeared in solo and group shows in museums and galleries throughout the US including in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and throughout Southern California, Oregon, Connecticut, and Texas. His paintings are also included in numerous books, exhibition catalogs, and publications on Photorealism and landscape painting and have been published in Art in America, ArtNews, New American Paintings, LA Times, and LA Weekly, among others, and his paintings are included in significant public, private and corporate collections throughout the US. Everett lives and works in Templeton, CA.
Bruce Everett's medium to large scale landscape paintings of Southern California and the Central Coast are characterized by dramatic light with raking shadows, unusual vantage points, and inspired compositions. Everett’s reasons for painting the landscape are first and foremost out of a deep emotional need to paint what moves him. Seeing a powerful scene isn't enough - he needs to paint it to really grasp it, and in a way to be done with it. But what attracts him to a subject in the first place are the formal elements---the dynamics of the composition, the textures, the shapes, the subtlety of colors and the polarities and rhythms of light and dark. It all adds up to being "of the place"---a connection that can't be explained except by painting it. It is important to him to accurately represent what he experiences. “I don't want to contrive a landscape so much as discover it,” he writes of his work.
There is an austere seriousness, and a recognition of an essential, profound intelligence in our natural environment in these paintings. Roads appear frequently, but never as a conscious symbol or metaphor. They help to define the contours of the landscape, and also serve to make the viewer feel present, and see through the artist’s eyes. They also make a statement about the presence of humanity in an otherwise uninhabited scene. Everett often combines both loose, painterly brushwork and a studied precise handling within the same painting, which directs the attention from the background to the foreground, and back again. Formal understandings aside, in the end, to marvel at our presence in the world is the true subject of Everett’s paintings.
Bruce Everett was born in Los Angeles but raised in the Midwest just north of Chicago. Being an only child, free to play on the bluffs and in the wooded ravines along the shore of Lake Michigan, most certainly contributed to his becoming a landscape painter. Although showing early artistic ability, he didn’t start painting until college. He received his MA from the University of Iowa, and his MFA in Painting from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He taught briefly at the University of Washington, Seattle. He then became a Professor of Art at California State University, Northridge from 1970 until retiring in 2005.
Everett has been exhibiting since 1968 and his work has been appeared in solo and group shows in museums and galleries throughout the US including in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and throughout Southern California, Oregon, Connecticut, and Texas. His paintings are also included in numerous books, exhibition catalogs, and publications on Photorealism and landscape painting and have been published in Art in America, ArtNews, New American Paintings, LA Times, and LA Weekly, among others, and his paintings are included in significant public, private and corporate collections throughout the US. Everett lives and works in Templeton, CA.
George Billis Gallery opened its second location in the Culver City area of Los Angeles in 2004 after opening in the Chelsea arts district in New York City in 1997. George Billis Gallery LA shows work by both emerging and established artists. For more information please contact the gallery at:
2716 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
T: 310-838-3685
F: 310-838-3438
email: la@georgebillis.com
www.georgebillis.com
2716 S. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
T: 310-838-3685
F: 310-838-3438
email: la@georgebillis.com
www.georgebillis.com
