The exhibition viewed America's art during the Great Depression, and how the art expressed America's self image as the country transitioned from a quiet agricultural society into an urban industrialized colossus.

Cities and industry were replacing agriculture. The Great Depression's deprivations and displacement caused millions to leave farms and villages and crowd into cities to find a job.

Industrialization set the agenda, and industry needed workers. Cities strained to accept farming refugees. Country folk, once accustomed to open space and a sense of tight rural community, now lived in close quartered ghettos working long hours in less than optimal conditions. The onetime community of rural life was being replaced by a new urban isolation.

The story of Agricultural America was best told by America's "Regionalist painters," especially, Iowa's Grant Wood (1891-1942), Missouri's Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) and Kansas' John Steuart Curry (1897-1946). These three studied in Paris, but left European and Eastern American influences behind as they dedicated themselves to mid-American values. They believed in the American backbone that once tamed the land and was undefeatable.

In the early 1930's, most people still lived on farms. They identified with the images produced by the Regionalist painters. And as these images

suggest, they believed their cultural heritage and frontier fortitude could overcome any challenges.

Consequently, they were equally willing to reject new ideas imported from Paris or modernistic ideas forged in places like New York.

At the time of its debut, Grant Wood's American Gothic received a review by none other than Gertrude Stein. She thought the painting to be a satire of the repression and narrow-mindedness of rural America. Wood did not agree with this critique. He saw American Gothic as a tribute to the steadfast American pioneering spirit.

Daughters of Revolution is more difficult to understand. On its face, it appears to be another image paying homage to the indomitable American Spirit, but in truth, Wood said it was his only satire.

While Wood was creating a stained glass window for the Veteran's Coliseum in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he decided to use stained glass manufactured in Germany. When members of the local Daughters of the American Revolution got wind of it, they protested. The women felt that using German glass in a window commemorating veterans of WWI was not acceptable. Wood included a private joke in this painting. The lace collar on the woman to the right was a gift Wood gave to his mother while studying in Germany.

Thomas Hart Benton studied in Paris and then settled in New York where the young artist found acceptance and success. But increasingly, he eschewed the avant-garde ideas of New York and declared himself an enemy of modernism. His paintings of sculpted colorful figures against a curvaceous backdrop told common truths of the common folk.

John Steuart Curry was conservative, but tried to remain unpolitical in his art. He depicted families surviving natural disasters and played with themes of man overcoming the challenges of nature. This is evident in his Hogs Killing a Snake which can easily be understood as a metaphor of American's taming of the frontier.

Regionalism had many other adherents, many who depicted the community. These depictions included aspects of the "shining city on a hill," with its hallmark values of respect, hard work, honesty, truthfulness and faith all on prominent display. Many stories are being told in Paul Sample's Church Supper. These people at first glance seem to enjoy the benefits of small town community. But with some study, none of the adults look particularly happy, and only the children seem to be enjoying themselves, perhaps still unaware of the complexities of adulthood.

Joe Jones was a St. Louis artist who was quite liberal in his politics and unafraid to address tough issues though his art. Jones is respected by some, but hated by others. His bold painting American Justice speaks to the ugliness underlying idyllic rural life. He unmasks the underbelly of the American Eden, highlighting the stark division between oppressive whites and oppressed blacks.

The industrialized and urban side of this exhibition includes a variety of images reflecting the new emerging America, so far unseen on the world's stage. Aaron Douglas's Aspiration seems to show Americans pointing toward a bright future, in this latest incarnation of their puritanical roots, the "Shining City on a Hill."

As if to embrace this new vision of America with energy and abandon, Paul

Cadmus' The Fleet's In and Phillip Evergood's Dance Marathon show Americans giving all their energies to pursue this new American Vision, although their actions fail to show any sense of mission or joy.

Edward Hopper gives us a glimpse into the private and perhaps alienated American's soul. In New York Movie, the theater usherette leans against a wall in a private moment, alone, while the audience, in the dark, focuses their

attention on screen, unconcerned and unaware of the private drama going on within the usherette's mind and heart.

Gas, a symbol of power, the powerhouse behind American's love of the open road and the freedom it represents. But, in a silent moment, the gas attendant, like the theater usherette, is alone in his thoughts.

Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler and Georgia O'Keeffe were major contributors to the Precisionist Art Movement, popular in the 1920's, and often celebrating America's urban landscape, its new bridges, skyscrapers and factories. This movement was also referred to as "cubist realism." These Precisionist images of American accomplishments often focused on clean lines and images of power. They seem void of any introspection, a pride in accomplishment without any consideration of its human cost or impact.

Georgia O'Keeffe hated being defined and certainly did not like critics speaking for her. Although she was strongly influenced by the Precisionist Movement,

she said, "it is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things."

During her summer stays in New Mexico, Georgia would collect bones and take them back to New York. During the winter, she would paint them in her studio. Critics have ascribed all kinds of interpretations to this practice, but Georgia insists she painted them just because she thought bones were beautiful.

Helen Lundeberg was a Southern California painter credited with establishing the Post-Surrealist movement. She worked in both the social realist and post surrealist styles. Like many during her career, she painted murals and created paintings for the WPA (Works Progress Administration) during the Great Depression.

In her Portrait of the Artist in Time, she symbolizes the stages of her life. The child's age is represented on the clock, two and a quarter. The blank paper on the table represents her unwritten future as she holds a flower bud, representing her undeveloped state. The adult shown in the portrait on the wall, the woman's fully bloomed rose symbolizes she has experienced sex and love. Connecting the child and the woman is a shadow, unmistakably meant to bridge the child with her eventual adult self. Its as if the painting is a paradigm, meant to show an infant America striving to grow into its adult self.

Alice Neel was one of the greatest portraitists of the twentieth century. Her paintings employed expressionistic line and color, and her figures seem to exhibit emotional intensity, with definable psychological elements.

Pat Whalen was a communist union organizer, active during the the era of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Neel pictures him as a blue collar worker with clenched fists of resolve and determination. She speaks to the intensity of the struggle experienced by people as they fought for survival and worker's rights during the Great Depression.

In Roustabouts, Joe Jones once again paints a powerful image of American injustice, this time showing the underbelly of America's longshoremen. These faceless workers look to the boss man hoping for the chance for a day's pay, a chance to survive another day. In the distance, the smoke laden air and gray skies speak to a dismal horizon, and the limited hope and joylessness of these laborers.

It was interesting to view this exhibit in Great Britain. Although the British are very close to America in most areas, in the perception of history, they are very different. Their sense of history is far longer than Americans', and their history has endured many more transitions than ours.

Had we viewed this exhibition in Chicago or New York, Americans would probably have taken this exhibition of paintings on its face, as a matter of fact. But the British have a much longer view of history. They seemed to look at these paintings objectively, representing the way the young country was trying to cope with its new spurt of growth.

Looking back, these paintings are valuable, for they exposed America's transition of thought and self-perception as it faced difficult times. Looking forward, America will face new problems and transitions. It is our hope that America's artists be up to the task and tell the tale as well as the artists of the 1930's.

In 1953, Eyvind Earle was a newly hired background assistant artist at Disney Studios. That year, he participated in a new 3-D animation short entitled "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom," which won an Oscar and an animation award from the Cannes Film Festival.

Walt Disney was impressed by Eyvind's contributions to this film and gave him a new assignment. Eyvind was named to be the lead artist responsible for styling, backgrounds and colors for the studio's up and coming film, Sleeping Beauty.

Eyvind took the assignment seriously and did some deep research into medieval architecture and art. In his new private studio office, Eyvind went to work producing hundreds of 6" and 12" sequence sketches, and painted full scale watercolor backgrounds. He filled his walls with artwork.

A parade of Disney employees flocked to witness Eyvind's office and view his progress. The Sleeping Beauty project took six years, and at its height, Eyvind supervised ten background painters who worked from Eyvind's own tutorial panels.

Recalling the Sleeping Beauty project, Eyvind said, "I wanted stylized, simplified Gothic. Straight tall perpendicular lines like Gothic Cathedrals ... I used one-point perspective. I rearranged the bushes and trees in geometrical patterns. I made a medieval tapestry out of the surface wherever possible. All my foregrounds were tapestry designs of decorative weeds and flowers and grasses. And since it is obvious that the Gothic style and detail evolved from the Arabic influence acquired during the Crusades, I found it perfectly permissible to use all the wonderful patterns and details found in Persian miniatures. And since Persian miniatures had a lot in common with Chinese and Japanese art, I felt it was OK for me to inject quite a bit of Japanese art, especially in the close-up of leaves and overhanging branches."

Regarding working at Disney Studios, Eyvind said, "I consider my six or seven years at Disney's the greatest art school in the whole world, because I worked hard and fast with the very, very best men in the industry.

There is no other place where such a vast number of the very best artists all worked in the same studio." In a similar vein, he said, "It was the art training of my life. There were 500 artists to learn from and you couldn't be limited in what you did because you'd be asked to draw everything under the sun."

In the lead up to the release of Sleeping Beauty, Walt Disney featured four of his best artists in a film demonstrating different styles of painting entitled 4 Artists Paint 1 Tree. Eyvind Earle was one of these artists along with Disney's Director of Animated Effects, Joshua Meador, legendary character animator, Marc Davis, and background artist Walt Peregoy. The film remains highly popular today and is shown with regularity in classrooms and art schools. You may view 4 Artists Paint 1 Tree on YouTube.com.

Eyvind was born in New York City in 1916. His father encouraged Eyvind to develop the habits of reading and painting daily. Eyvind adopted both and they served him well throughout his life. He traveled extensively with his father in Mexico and France, even having a solo exhibition in France at age 14. When he returned to the U.S., he worked briefly as an assistant sketch artist for United Artists. He took a year off and bicycled cross country from Hollywood to New York, paying for his trip by selling watercolors along the way.

In 1943, Eyvind was drafted into the Navy and was stationed at Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida. In his off time, he drew cartoons of everyday Navy life. This lead to his being ordered to paint a large mural on the base.

His talent was noticed by his fellow sailors and officers. Eyvind made the most of this notoriety and made extra money painting portraits for both officers and enlisted men. After the war, Eyvind moved to New York with his new wife Alice, and soon Alice and daughter Kristen accompanied Eyvind on their move back to California in 1948.

After Sleeping Beauty, Eyvind left Disney Studios, intent on making his mark in animation. He briefly worked for John Sutherland Productions before starting Eyvind Earle Productions in 1961. He quickly gained a reputation for innovation and creativity, producing trademark logos, film trailers, film advertisements, television commercials and animated specials for his company. A major success was his Christmas Special created for Tennessee Ernie Ford entitled The Story of Christmas (1963).

This success of his Tennessee Ernie Ford Christmas Special prompted Eyvind to begin another project, an animated Easter Special. The end result was a 30 minute long, animated masterpiece. It took Eyvind an entire year to complete.

But at the very last minute, the network balked and pulled the project, saying the stylized sequence of the crucifixion could be interpreted as being anti-Semitic.

Looking back at this painful experience, Eyvind said, "That was the beginning of the end of my motion picture career." He retreated into his fine art painting where he remained, happy and successful, the rest of his life.

Awakening Beauty: The Art of Eyvind Earle is now showing at the Walt Disney Family Museum through January 8, 2018. The many paintings on display convey Eyvind's deep connection to the American landscape.

The exhibition covers his story from his early days in New York, his youthful travels through Mexico and France, his days in the Navy, his tenure at Disney Studios and the production of Sleeping Beauty, and his 40 year long fine art career which followed. The exhibition runs through January 8, 2018.

Jim Callahan, the statue’s sculptor, said the sitting position is part of a genre of similar works around the world of other great figures ranging from Gandhi, to Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and Einstein. Here's a LINK to Clark Mason's Press Democrat article.

Linda Sorensen's paintings can now be seen at ...

the Bodega Landmark Gallery Collection,
located inland in the town of Bodega, west end of town a half block from the Casino, and just across from the General Store and the Bodega Volunteer Fire Department.

Corrick's "Art Trails Gallery,"
located in downtown Santa Rosa on 4th Street, just steps from Santa Rosa's newly opened town Square.

By June 9: Gourmet Au Bay down on the waterfront. Eastshore to the bottom of the hill, then straight across the intersection, and slightly left over the little bridge.

Linda Sorensen now rents an artist's cabin/studio, located near Monte Rio, overlooking Dutch Bill Creek among redwoods -- near the Russian River. She reports plenty of company from the mallards and mergansers on the Creek. A new series of paintings is in progress, several of which are already on view at Gourmet Au Bay on the Bodega Bay waterfront.

Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery is not at present a "brick and mortar" storefront gallery. We've moved out and now exist solely as an online gallery. You may make arrangements to view specific artworks by emailing or calling us. Contact us by by phone 707-875-2911 or email us at Art@BodegaBayHeritageGallery.com. We continue to host our website and Linda's site, LindaSorensenPaintings.com, and publish our online newsletter every month.

Pacific Bay Gallery is Bodega Bay's newest gallery featuring the works of Noki Jones. It is located next to The Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay. You may remember it as our most recent storefront location ... easily identifiable by Bodega Bay's newest and tallest palm tree. They've made some vast improvements. Stop in and enjoy!

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art