Current Exhibitions
“Harvey Cusworth: Visions of Conejo Valley and the Malibu Coast”
On view September 13, 2025, to January 11, 2026
Harvey Cusworth fell in love with drawing and illustration at the age of eleven. Born and raised in West Los Angeles, Cusworth earned a BFA in illustration and graphic design from Brigham Young University in Utah and later an MFA from California State University, Long Beach. After starting a family and helping grow the family construction business, Harvey set his sights on teaching.
For nearly two decades, Cusworth taught Advanced Placement studio art at the high school level. With his students working in a variety of media and styles, Harvey emphasized design and composition—the overall arrangement and relationships between visual elements—as the cornerstone of all art. This principle guides his own work. Teaching also required Cusworth to break complex skills into clear, accessible steps, a process of simplification that many experienced artists consider the greatest lesson of all.
Now retired, Harvey paints full-time both plein air (outdoors) and in the studio he built alongside his Thousand Oaks home. While he dabbles in watercolor, pastel, and acrylic, he prefers painting in oils as the colors are more intense and can be blended more easily. His most recent works capture landscapes and urban life in the Conejo Valley and along the Malibu coast.
Cusworth is especially inspired by California’s distinctive natural light, particularly in the early morning and late afternoon when the angle of the sun casts dramatic colors, shapes, shadows, and patterns. There is magic in the way light interacts with and transforms everything we see, and it is this dynamic interplay of light, color, and shape that guides Harvey’s vision.
Below is a sampling of artworks featured in the exhibition. Click on any image to enlarge.
"Celebrating Nature: Paintings by Allied Artists of the Santa Monica Mountains and Seashore"
On view July 12, 2025, to November 9, 2025
Allied Artists of the Santa Monica Mountains and Seashore was founded in the early 1990s to support and promote the hard-fought conservation of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, established in 1978. The SMMNRA encompasses over 156,000 acres that stretch east to west from Griffith Park in Los Angeles County to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County. With 46 miles of scenic coastline, over 500 miles of trails, and a vast array of native flora, fauna, and culturally significant sites, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is the largest urban national recreation area in the world, bordering the second-largest city in the United States.
For over 25 years, the Allied Artists have united to celebrate and preserve the natural beauty of the Santa Monica Mountains through plein air (outdoor) painting. Comprising over 60 artists, the group gathers monthly to paint on location across the park's vast and scenic landscapes. Through exhibitions, art sales, and community engagement, the Allied Artists raise awareness about environmental conservation, often donating proceeds to support related causes. Working primarily in oil, acrylic, watercolor, and pastel, their paintings reflect a shared appreciation for art and open space.
The work of the Allied Artists also serves as an ongoing record of the iconic parkland, with some scenes now lost to history. In 2018, the Woolsey Fire burned nearly 100,000 acres of the SMMNRA, and the 2025 Palisades Fire burned over 23,000 acres, including 5,500 homes. Several members of the alliance lost or sustained damage to their homes. Rather than feeling deterred, the recent wildfire events have reinforced the Allied Artists’ mission to paint to preserve, protect, and restore the Santa Monica Mountains and seashore.
Featured artists include Robin Angelides, Ruth Askren, Liz Blum, Steve Brown, John von Buelow, Larry Deeds, Jessica Falcone, Karen Fedderson, Susan Flanigan, Marian Fortunati, Barbara Freund, Carole Garland, Russell Hunziker, Virginia Kamhi, Nora Koerber, Timothy Kitz, Monica List, Nathan Mellott, Jane Mick, Rachel Sylvers, Bonnie Taylor, Laura Wambsgans, and Sharon Weaver.
Learn more about Allied Artists of the Santa Monica Mountains and Seashore at www.allied-artists.com
Below is a sampling of artworks featured in the exhibition. Click on any image to enlarge.
From the Collection: Photographs by Horace Bristol
On view August 22, 2025, to November 9, 2025
Horace Bristol (1908-1997) is regarded as one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, though he preferred to be called a photojournalist. His images document pivotal moments in history—from the urban poor and migrant farm workers of the Great Depression to the battlefields of World War II and portraits of post-war Japan and Southeast Asia.
Born in Whittier, California, in 1908, Bristol spent much of his childhood in Santa Paula (1916-1925), where he attended McKevett Elementary and Santa Paula High School. Journalism was the family trade: his grandfather was a newspaperman and editor of the Santa Paula Chronicle. His mother was a reporter and editor for several papers, and his father was a linotype operator for the Los Angeles Times.
Bristol began exploring photography while living in Europe in 1929. After returning to Ventura County in 1931 with his young family, he studied commercial photography at the Art Center of Los Angeles and converted a friend’s ranch shed in Santa Paula into a darkroom. By 1933, he had moved to San Francisco, where he befriended noted photographers Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Dorothea Lange. He earned his living as a freelance photographer for Sunset and Time magazines.
In 1937, Bristol became one of the first staff photographers for Life magazine, newly relaunched as a photojournalism publication. That same year, he approached writer John Steinbeck about documenting the lives of Dust Bowl migrant farm workers in California. Steinbeck interviewed the families while Bristol photographed them. Though their collaboration was rejected by Life, Steinbeck later drew on the experience to finish writing his novel The Grapes of Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Bristol’s images were used by 20th Century Fox in casting the film adaptation.
During World War II, Bristol was one of five photographers commissioned by the U.S. Navy to document the war. After the war, Fortune magazine sent him to Japan for what was meant to be a two-year assignment—he remained there for 25 years. Following the tragic death of his first wife, Virginia, in 1956, Bristol burned many of his prints and negatives, while others were packed away and forgotten for nearly three decades.
In 1976, Bristol and his family moved to Ojai. In 1985, his son Henri asked him if he had read The Grapes of Wrath. In response, Bristol opened several footlockers filled with his photographs and began reclaiming his legacy. Bristol spent the remaining 12 years of his life organizing, exhibiting, and preserving his work.
