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Now at the gallery On the More Modern Side ... a selection of paintings from our gallery collection featuring layerist works of Alexander Nepote, oil paintings by Conrad Buff & Ferdinand Burgdorff, and wotercolors by Thelma Speed Houston & Milford Zornes |
Alexander was born and raised in the Central Valley. In the 1930's, he studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts and then went on to receive his master's degree in fine arts from Mills College. When World War II broke out, Alexander was thirty-nine. He worked in the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond.
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"Green Pool Grotto" Mixed Media, 31 x 48 |
After the war, he became a professor and Dean of the Faculty at the California College of Arts and Crafts, and then served as Art Professor at California State University, San Francisco. Early on in his creative life, he was creating wet-into-wet landscapes of farms and city scenes. In the 40's, he became more abstract, with floating shapes and complex geometric compositions. In the 50's, he created more abstract landscapes, and in the 60's, he exhibited a fascination with rock shapes and textures, combining watercolors and experimental collage techniques. |
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"Colorful Cliff Grotto" Mixed Media 24 x 40 |
He was a founding member of a group known as "The Layerists," and placed his multi media works in their shows. |
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Roadside Produce Stand watercolor 15 x 22 |
Road to the Coast, 1957 Watercolor, 15 x 21 |
(Unsigned, manner of Nepote) Landscape Before the Storm Watercolor, 11 3/4 x 17 3/4 |
Blue Mountain Oil on masonite 18 x 24 |
From a cave Oil on paper 9 x 12 |
Self Portrait |
Conrad Buff 1886 - 1975 |
Mary Buff Oil on paperboard 23 3/4 x 29 7/8 |
Born in Switzerland in 1886 and having spent his later teen years studying art in Munich, Conrad Buff came to the United States as a talented nineteen year old. In his first year in America, he spent some time doing odd jobs, herding sheep in a |
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Sunlit Face Oil on paperboard 16 x 24 |
Mountain River Oil on paperboard |
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Swiss speaking region of Wisconsin, cooking in cafes and bartending. As his English improved, he quickly made his way west, and at at age twenty-one, he arrived in Los Angeles and met some artists who turned into life long friends. Among these were Maynard Dixon, eleven years his senior, and Edgar Payne, three years older.
By the age of forty, Conrad Buff had established himself as a notable artist of strikingly-constructed mountain and desert landscapes of the Southwest. Today his paintings hang in Sacramento's Crocker Museum, the Los Angeles County Art Museum, the Oakland Museum, the San Diego Art Museum and others. |
Pebble Beach 1956 Oil on board 16 x 20 |
Ferdinand Burgdorff 1881 - 1975 | On the old Wharf, Monterey, California 1948 Oil on board 18 x 24 |
Ferdinand Burgdorff lived to be 94 years old, and was upon his death, the oldest working member of the Carmel, California art community.
A Cleveland, Ohio native, Ferdinand studied in Paris with Rene Menard and Florence Este. In 1907, he headed to America's West, living in boxcars as a railroad laborer between Yuma, Arizona and Calexico, California. While in the Southwest, he would venture away from the rail line on horseback to paint the desert. He later wrote of these experiences saying, "There were such exciting things to see and paint, undisturbed by a single human within miles." In 1911 when he was only thirty years old, he returned to Clevelandand sold enough of his works to pay for a round the world trip. His goal was to see Greece and Egypt, ancient desert worlds. Painting along the Nile reminded him of his time along the Colorado River. |
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Indians at Monument Valley 1972 Oil on masonite 16 x 20 |
California Coast, 1911 Oil on canvas 10 x 14 |
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Back in America , he lived and painted in Sante Fe, New Mexico, painting the region known as "Sandia" west of Albuquerque. He then moved to California, and became an illustrator for a new publication, Sunset Magazine. Many of his paintings were published in Sunset. He settled in Carmel, building a house near Pebble Beach on Rondo Road. He made many trips to the Grand Canyon and Hopi Reservations in Arizona. His landscapes were both realistic and romantic, conveying mystery and drama in the landscape. |
Cathedral Watercolor, 21 1/2 x 29 1/2 (sight) |
Thelma Speed Houston |
Thelma Speed Houston "She painted a watercolor a day for fifty years!" 1914 - 2000 |
Church Door Watercolor, 22 x 30 |
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Thelma Gladys Speed Houston (also listed as Thelma Gladys Speed) was born in the Bronx, and first studied art at New York's Pratt Institute. She became a textile designer for A. Sulka and Company of New York and Paris, and later on a colorist for the St. Andrews Textile Company of New York.
By the 1940's she had relocated to San Diego, California, and produced expressionist watercolors often of the San Diego cityscape. She traveled and painted in other parts of California, spent time on Maui, and enjoyed painting and traveling the world. A true enthusiast, she also taught and was a member of the Laguna Beach Art Association, and is fondly remembered as having painted "a watercolor a day for fifty years." |
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Red and Blue abstract Watercolor, 31 1/2 x 24 1/2 |
Promenade Watercolor, 12 x 16 |
Blue Red and Yellow abstract Watercolor 17 x 13 |
"S.F. Fog" Watercolor 13 1/2 x 19 1/2 (sight) |
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Augie's (famed Del Coronado Restaurant circa 1950's) Watercolor, 12 x 16 |
"Big Sur" Watercolor 14 x 19 1/2 (sight) |
"Aurora Borealis" Watercolor 14 x 20 (sight) |
Enchanted Forest Watercolor 18 1/8 x 30 |
Hillside Park Oil on masonite, 10 x 18 1/2 |
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In May of 2007, a retrospective was held in Vista, California, co-curated by Ken Jenkins, a stage and screen and television star recently known for his character, Dr.Kelso on the sitcom “Scrubs.” Ken Jenkins describes when he and his wife first encourntered Thelma Speed Houston's watercolor painting. He said, "We didn't know much about her, but in the end, we feel as if we |
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didn't pick her out, rather she grabbed us up by the wrist and said, 'I've got a job for you two." Today, Jenkins is a Thelma Speed Houston collector with over 300 works. Linda and I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Jenkins about Thelma's work. As an a person who has spent a 40 plus year acting career (mostly on Broadway), Ken was most impressed with Thelma's discipline of producing a painting a day for fifty years, her unfailing passion for her art, a passion which was evident in her paintings and in the loving remembrances of her many students. |
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Above are photos of Ken Jenkins as Dr. Kelso on Scrubs & as himself preparing for a Thelma Speed Houston Exhibition |
Milford Zornes with sketch book |
Milford Zornes 1908 - 2008 | Canyon de Chelly, 2001 Watercolor, 8 1/2 x 11 |
North Ligurian Coast, Italy, 1987, 9 x 13, watercolor |
Milford Zornes was born in 1908. As a twenty-year-old in 1928, he went on a bit of a “walk about." He hitch-hiked across America from his native West, worked on the docks of New York, and after earning his ticket, shipped out for Europe.
After his return to America, he settled in Los Angeles, studying art with F. Tolles Chamberlin at the Otis Art Institute and Millard Sheets at the Scripps College. By 1933, he was receiving awards for his watercolors which he produced for the P.W.A.P. art project. He won a one-man show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. He was drafted after the outbreak of WWII, and was assigned to be an official artist in the China, India, and Burma theaters of operation. Most of the works he produced in this period were turned over to the Pentagon, but he did have a one man show in Bombay. After the war, he settled in Claremont, California, and spent much time painting, |
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Mt. San Antonio, 1989 Watercolor, 22 x 30 |
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Orchard Under Grey Skies Watercolor, 14 1/4 x 22 1/4 |
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teaching, and traveling. He invented a traveling classroom, taking his watercolor students to exotic travel destinations for his painting workshops. In 1963, Zornes purchased the former home and studio of Maynard Dixon in Salt Lake City to use as a location for regular watercolor workshops. He purchased the home from Edith Hamlin, widow of the famed artist.
Milford Zornes’ paintings are known for their broad brush strokes, and his use of unpainted areas of white to help define forms. He attended his 100th birthday party, a celebration of his life long artistic career on January 26, 2008 at the Pasadena Musuem of Art. He died less than a month later on February 24, 2008. He has taught art throughout much of Southern California, including the University of California at Santa Barbara. His works are displayed in many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Laguna Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. |