Skidmore Contemporary Gallery is open by appointment. So take a look at the website, and enjoy a virtual art party with a glass of wine, online at Skidmore Contemporary Art (BergamotStation, 2525 Michigan Avenue, B-4, Santa Monica, 90404). Call 310-828-5070 for more info. Here is a spotlight of two artists Davi Ashwell, and Eric Nash.
David Ashwell, Downhill, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 45″ x 50″
David Ashwell doesn’t consider himself to be a landscape painter, at least not in the plein air sense. While his coastal and beach scenes are an attempt to find motifs that resonate with life in Southern California, he is also looking to express a more abstract feeling of optimism—a feeling that brought him here in the first place.
Arriving from Britain in 1984, Ashwell was struck by the intense light that greets us nearly everyday. “By comparison,” he says, “living in Britain was like living under a 40 watt bulb.” At that time Ashwell was a director of television commercials. When he began painting, he drew heavily from this previous career.
Having spent 30 years looking through a camera, Ashwell was familiar with the different spatial relationships created by using different lenses. A wide-angle lens separates elements in a picture while a long lens stacks them together. With the eye always having the same focal length, he was excited to play with this extra dimension offered by painting from reference photographs that have been shot with a variety of lenses.
Eric Nash is a lifelong artist, who graduated with a BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He began his career in Chicago while working as an advertising art director. This experience cemented his interest in universal and iconic imagery. He works in oil and charcoal and is known as a West Coast Realist. Important influences include Pop Art, American Realism and Cinematography.
Eric Nash, Hollywood View, 2020, oil on canvas, 36″ x 48″
Drawn to its iconic landscape, Nash relocated to Los Angeles in 2000. His work is in many private art collections in America and Europe, as well as corporate collections including Delta Airlines. He has been the subject of a wide range of print and online media articles. In addition to numerous solo gallery shows his work has been featured at Laguna Art Museum, Tucson Museum of Art, Palm Springs Museum of Art and the Riverside Art Museum. He currently lives and works in Yucca Valley, California.
Watch a short film about artist Eric Nash and the West by filmmaker Joe Taylor on the website – Skidmore Contemporary Art/EricNash.
On view thru May, 2020;
What: Virtual Exhibition
Where: Skidmore Contemporary Art, Bergamot, 2525 Michigan Avenue, B-4, Santa Monica, 90404
Phone: 310-828-5070 – Call for more info
Website: http://www.skidmorecontemporaryart.com
