"When it comes to the arts, passion should always trump common sense."

Sonoma County's artists express their inspirations at the upcoming two Art@TheSource studios weekends June 6-7 and 13-14.

There are also mid-week events, and at the preview exhibitions such as at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Gallery One in Petaluma, and Corricks in Santa Rosa.

Linda will be a guest artist at Lillian Lehman's sculpture studio in Salmon Creek, 225 Driftwood.

For two weekends (June 6 & 7 and again on June 13 & 14) Art@TheSource artists will open their studios to the general public. Its an excellent opportunity to meet the artists in that special place where their magic takes place. And, should any of their work tickle your fancy, it's your opportunity to support a local artist by making one of their creations one of your treasured possessions.

A big part of Art@TheSource fun is the members' exhibition at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. Each artist submits one of their pieces for this joint exhibition. When gathered together under one roof, it gives one a sense of the diverse artistic wealth expressed by Sonoma County artists. A percentage of these sales goes to support Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and to promote artistic endeavors throughout the county.

Here are glimpses of a few works by a few of the artists participating in this years show.

Rufus Ward, April 25, 2015 Recently there was a television series about some treasure hunters out west having found an old map that they thought would lead them to a long lost gold mine. The program featured them searching across rocky landscapes, seeking the lost mine. The scenery where the treasure hunters were venturing looked much like some of the scenes once painted by Columbus native and long time Disney animation effects director, Josh Meador.

The television images and story brought to mind something Phil Meador, Josh's son, once told me. Often, Josh would take his wife, Elizabeth (Josh was married to Elizabeth Alston, his high school sweetheart from Columbus), and Phil and the family dog on weekend trips in their station wagon with a teardrop trailer in tow. Elizabeth and Phil would go walking, while Josh, with the dog for company, would go into the country side and paint or draw. Josh especially loved drawing or painting the rugged beauty of Nevada's "Valley of Fire," where he would sometimes even hunt for storied lost treasure.

From the late 1930s through the 1950s animation experienced its golden age, with Walt Disney Studios its foremost practitioner. At Disney, Columbus native Josh Meador supervised effects animation. He is best known for his creative

Josh Meador, however, did much more than just animation. Meador was a noted artist in his own right. He had a lifelong love affair with art. His mediums covered the spectrum from pastels to ink washes to pen and ink to oils. He drew posters for the U.S. Forest Service and was one of the first artists to use Smokey Bear to promote forest fire prevention. His oil paintings of California scenes won many awards and fifty of his works were included in Walt Disney's personal collections.

In the late 1950s, Josh was an effects animator working on the Disney feature, "Sleeping Beauty." To publicize the upcoming release of the movie in 1959, Walt Disney devoted one of his weekly television programs to "Adventures in Art" with a segment titled "4 Artist Paint 1 Tree," It featured four animators, one being Meador, who were working on "Sleeping Beauty." Disney called them not just Disney animators but artists with "national reputations." Disney described their their work on "Sleeping Beauty," and then showed them while describing their style of painting as they each painted the same tree.

Josh won many awards in jury shows for his landscapes executed in oils. And though most of his major exhibits were on the west coast, one exhibit was at the National Academy of Design.

When he would return home to Columbus for visits he still enjoyed painting and drawing. The Meador family has given the Columbus Lowndes Public Library a painting he did of the old and now demolished Stockhard House and drawings of three other Columbus houses including Temple Heights and the Harris-Wade house. Both of those houses were across the street from Meador's childhood home.

In 1965, at age 54, Josh Meador died of a heart attack at his home in Caspar, California. Shortly before his death he had completed a painting for President Lyndon Johnson and had been designated as the artist for NASA's Apollo Moon Landing program.

The Walt Disney Family Museum in California recently had an exhibit of art work by Walt's "artist friends." The seven featured artists ranged from Norman Rockwell to Josh Meador. The Meador painting on exhibit was Disney's "Smoke Tree Ranch," which had hung in Walt Disney's office.

The painting even shows up hanging in Disney's office in last year's hit movie, "Saving Mr Banks." That painting is closely tied to a painting (Cloud Patterns) given to Columbus by the Meador family and which hangs in the lobby of the Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Disney had a Meador painting of his Smoke Tree Ranch hanging in his office and, according to Phil Meador, another hanging in one of his homes. When Walt died the Disney family kept the ranch painting that hung in the office but gave the ranch painting that had hung in a residence to Mrs. Meador. In turn, the Meador family gave the painting "Cloud Patterns" to Columbus .Through the generosity of the Meador family, people in Columbus have the rare gift of a painting by Josh

Meador of Walt Disney's ranch that had been owned by Walt Disney and hung in one of Disney's residences.

For anyone interested in reading more about Josh Meador's paintings or even buying one, I would suggest visiting the web site of the Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery in California. The gallery owners are good people, friends of the Meador family and handle the sale of paintings for the Meador estate. Their web site is found at: http://www.bbhgallery.com.

 Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at RufusHistory@aol.com.

J. E. H. MacDonald helped found the Group of Seven. He came to Canada at age 14 from England, settling in Hamilton, Ontario. He studied art and became a commercial designer for Grip Ltd.

He wanted to establish a Canadian style of art. He remained true to his vision, even in the face of fierce rejection and critique. The established art community was used to smooth blended muted tones, and found MacDonald's bright intense colors hard on the eye.

Today however, MacDonald is admired for his rich command of color. One critic boldly compared his work to another once rejected artist, "His brushwork is at once disciplined and vigorous. His best on-the-spot sketches possess an intensity and freshness of execution not dissimilar from Van Gogh."

Frederick Varley believed art to be a spiritual vocation. He wrote, "The artist's job is to unlock fetters and release spirit, to tear to pieces and recreate so forcefully that . . . the imagination of the onlooker is awakened and completes within himself the work of art."

During WWI, he accompanied Canadian troops in the Hundred

Days offensive from Amiens, France to Mons, Belgium. Initially eager to go to Europe, he was deeply disturbed by what he saw there. He wrote, "We’d be healthier to forget [the war], and that we never can. We are forever tainted with its abortiveness and its cruel drama."

As a young man, Andrew Young Jackson worked his way to Europe on a cattle boat. He returned to Canada, and studied at the Art Institute in Chicago before returning to France to study at the Adademie Julian.

After Lawren Harris bought one of his paintings, Jackson accompanied other founders of the Group of Seven on painting excursions to Algonquin Park north of Lake Superior.

Lawren Harris is best known of the Canadian Group of Seven. His works are more abstract and simplified. Over time, he decided not to sign his work so that it would be judged on its own merit.

His works are known for their rich color and thick painterly impasto.

As A.Y. Jackson claimed: "Without Harris there would have been no Group of Seven. He provided the stimulus; it was he who encouraged us to always take the bolder course, to find new trails."

Youngest of the original Group of Seven, Franklin Carmichael remained on the fringe of the group and was most closely associated with the newer members of the group. He was greatly influenced by Tom Thompson, whom he accompanied on weekend sketching trips. Today, he is most famous for his watercolors of the Ontario landscape.

He felt strongly about the internal source of an artist's inspiration. "It is imperative that the artist reveal through the medium in which he is happiest, what he sees, thinks and feels about his surroundings." 

Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald was the only member of the Group of Seven based in Western Canada. As his career advanced, his style became more abstract.

Like others in the group, he believed the best way to explore our inner selves is to explore the wonders just beyond us. He put it this way, "We can only develop an understanding of the great forces

behind the organization of nature by endlessly searching the outer manifestations. And we can only know ourselves better and still better by this search. There is an indefinable solidity that penetrates the work and a fine humility comes through the enlarged vision of the eternal wonders that surround us."

Edwin Holgate studied at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and later taught there. He is known for his portraiture and his female nudes done in outdoor settings. As WWI broke out, he was visiting in Ukraine. He had to cross Asia to return to Canada. Once home, he returned to France with the Canadian Army.

When Holgate exhibited his nudes in the 1930 Group of Seven exhibition, The Toronto daily Star's art critic acclaimed: “Holgate sets a new fashion in nudes - away from

French decadence to the Laurentians for a background; splendidly painted nudes without cosmetics." He presented nudes free and natural in the wilderness setting, just like Canadians like to think of themselves.

A. J. Casson is known for his farm scenes, landscapes and forest paintings of the Ontario landscape.

His style was unique, distinctly his own. The clearly defined lines and well thought out composition of his works make lasting impressions from the first glance. He captured the pastoral scenes of early Ontario, now overtaken with the fastly expanding urban scene.

His work is loved by his countrymen, and Casson has received honors from many Canadian organizations. His work fit well into the goal of the Group of Seven, defining a new Canadian Art, and has given insight into Canada's roots, its vast and beautiful landscape.

Arthur Lismer studied in Antwerp and was influenced by the Barbizon and Post Impressionist painters. During WW I, he spent time in Nova Scotia and was fascinated with camouflaged ships. Here, the Olympic's camouflage had been added at the height of the German U-Boat threat, and was painted to make the ship more difficult to identify and target. This glimpse of the busy Halifax Naval Base is loved by Canadians, a reminder of

the sacrifice of their sons during WWI. The Olympic carried over 200,000 British, American, and Canadian troops to and from Europe.

Emily Carr (1871-1945) and her painting career is similar to California's Grace Hudson (1865-1937) in that both pioneering artistic women painted indigenous people. While Grace Hudson focused on the Pomo Indians in Northern California, Emily Carr made sketching trips to the aboriginal villages on the west coast of Vancouver Island, home of the Nuu-chah-nulth people, known among English speaking people as the "Nootka."

She then studied in Paris at the Academie Colarossi and was influenced by the post impressionists and Fauvists.

When speaking of her work among the aboriginal people of British Columbia, Emily said, "I glory in our wonderful west and I hope to leave behind me some of the relics of its first primitive greatness. These things should be to us Canadians what the ancient Briton's relics are to the English. Only a few more years and they will be gone forever into silent nothingness and I would gather my collection together before they are forever past."

Tom Thomson was a most influential Canadian artist. He influenced the Canada Group of Seven, but he died under mysterious circumstances before the group was formally established.

He was a self taught artist and graphic designer. He made trips to Algonquin Park north of Toronto. Members of the Group of Seven appreciated Thomson's love of rugged natural scenery, and like

Thomson, they used broad brushstrokes with liberal applications of paint to capture the stark beauty and vibrancy of the Canadian landscape.

While on a canoe trip in 1917 on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park, Thomson disappeared. Less than a month before his 40th birthday, his body was discovered floating in the lake eight days later. The death was ruled a drowning, but stories ranging from suicide to murder persist.

Our Gallery Hours are from 12:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M., Wednesday through Sunday. We are also available for scheduled appointments, especially for those who wish to view the gallery on Mondays or Tuesdays. Please call Dan at the gallery and schedule a visit, or call him on his cellphone, 510-414-9821

"California Coast" 1965, Joshua Meador 1911-1965
LBJ Presidential Library Collection, Austin, Texas

We offer our thanks to Casey Newbegin of the LBJ Presidential Library for sending us a photo of Joshua Meador's Coastal California which currently hangs at the LBJ Library.

Josh created this seascape for President Johnson in 1965 when he was honored by President Johnson for being named to be the artist aboard the aircraft carrier chosen to retrieve the first astronauts that landed on the moon. Sadly, Josh died later in 1965, and thus did not live to witness the moon landing or the astronauts' historic return four years later.

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art