Current Exhibitions
Gail Faulkner: A Lasting Impression
September 19, 2026, to January 10, 2027
Ventura artist Gail Faulkner (1947-2023) wasn’t afraid of a challenge. It was her favorite part of the process.
Born in New Jersey in 1947, Gail couldn’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t drawing, painting, or creating something. As a high school student, she fell in love with the realism of 17th-century Dutch still life painting during visits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
At the urging of her parents, Gail pursued a career in science, working as an X-ray technician in special procedures for 17 years, but she continued practicing art in her free time. Looking for a change in her 30s, Faulkner studied fine and commercial art at the Philadelphia College of Art and the Sanski Art Center in Haddonfield, New Jersey. She moved to California in 1981, where she continued her art studies at UCLA, began a successful second career as a graphic designer, and married her husband, Bill.
In 2003, Faulkner took a watercolor painting workshop and devoted herself to the medium for the final two decades of her life, studying under artists including renowned Ventura watercolorist Norman Kirk. Kirk encouraged Faulkner to embrace the tight, highly detailed realism—more akin to oil painting—that gave her watercolors their distinctive character.
Gail loved exploring her compositions, arranging and rearranging fruits, flowers, and vegetables in an endless variety of colors and shapes. She paired them with treasured baskets and pottery from her own collection, searching for the perfect balance. Each painting began with a detailed drawing and took several weeks to complete.
Faulkner began exhibiting her work across Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in 2008 and soon earned numerous first-place awards from organizations including the Santa Paula Art Show, California Gold Coast Watercolor Society, and Buenaventura Art Association.
Faulkner was an artist member of the California Art Club, an Artist of Distinction with American Women Artists, and an active board member of the Museum of Ventura County. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Ventura County, City of Oxnard, City of Ventura, Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, and the Santa Paula Art Museum.
Gail Faulkner died in Ventura in 2023. Her goal was never to make a statement, but to find beauty in the objects that surrounded her and give others the same pleasure.
Special thanks to Bill Faulkner for his invaluable assistance in bringing this exhibition together.
Below is a sampling of artworks featured in the exhibition. Click on any image to enlarge.
Wrona Gall and Ted Gall: Stories in Pigment and Metal
July 18, 2026, to November 8, 2026
Cousins by marriage, painter Wrona Gall and sculptor Ted Gall grew up only a few miles apart in Chicago. Today, they continue to live and work near one another in Ojai, California. Ted moved to Ojai with his family in 1988, and Wrona and her husband, Jim, followed in 2015.
As a child, Wrona often looked to the sky, studying the movement of clouds from her bedroom window. Their ever-changing forms hinted at the possibility of transformation and offered an escape from tensions at home. While dating Ted’s cousin Jim, Wrona visited an exhibition of Edward Hopper’s paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago and decided to become a painter. After earning her BFA and Master of Arts in Teaching from Beloit College in Wisconsin, Wrona and Jim married in 1970 and purchased an 8,000-square-foot industrial loft in downtown Chicago, where they lived and worked for the next 40 years.
Raised in a modest, working-class Chicago neighborhood, Ted Gall’s parents noticed his artistic ability early on and sent him to summer classes at the Art Institute of Chicago when he was 12. At 15, Ted’s uncle helped him secure a job delivering artwork for a commercial art studio. After graduating from high school, Gall found work as an animator and graphic designer. It was while taking night classes at the Art Institute and the American Academy of Art that he shifted his focus to sculpture.
In 1973, Ted became artist-in-residence at automotive gasket manufacturer Fel-Pro, Inc., in Skokie, Illinois, a position he held for the next twenty-two years. There, he transformed industrial scrap metal and automotive parts into sculptures and awards installed throughout the factory, displayed around the city, and presented to clients.
Though Wrona and Ted work in very different mediums, both artists embrace a deeply hands-on approach to making art. Wrona paints directly with her hands, often climbing atop her wood panels to build luminous, abstract cloudscapes with layers of acrylic paint. Ted sculpts his mythic figures in clay, wax, or welded steel before sending each model to a local foundry to be cast in bronze, aluminum, or stainless steel using the lost wax method. The casts are further refined, polished, and patinated in Ted’s studio. Many of his sculptures are interactive, with moving parts that are meant to be touched and manipulated.
Ted draws inspiration from imagination, mythology, and folklore. For Wrona, the sky is both muse and metaphor—a universal point of connection, a catalyst for memory, and a source of respite. Together, their work invites reflection on our relationships with ourselves, with nature, and with one another. Ultimately, both artists hope their work evokes your own memories, questions, and stories.
Below is a sampling of artworks featured in the exhibition. Click on any image to enlarge.
From the Collection: De Colores
September 2, 2026, to November 29, 2026
In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15—October 15), this exhibition features works by Latino artists from the Santa Paula Art Museum’s permanent collection. The title of the exhibit borrows from the late Santa Paula artist Xavier Montes (1952–2020) and his long-running De Colores Art Show. He once explained: “The name of the show was chosen for its meaning: diversity, the idea that it takes people of all shapes, sizes, and colors to make the world the dynamic force that it is.” As a founding board member of the Santa Paula Art Museum, Montes encouraged the Museum to embrace that same spirit of diversity in building its collection.
De Colores features art by Cesar Aldana, Carlos Almaraz, Sergio Hernández, Gilbert “Magu” Luján, Miguel Ángel González Mesillas, Xavier Montes, Guillermo Silva Santamaria, and Eloy Torrez.
