Current Exhibitions

On view November 15, 2025, to March 8, 2026
Exhibit sponsored by Brokaw Ranch Company

Art About Agriculture was founded in 2007 by Santa Paula photographer John Nichols and painter Gail Pidduck. Growing up on a ranch in Santa Paula and spending her college summers working in Oxnard’s flower fields, Pidduck has long understood how deeply agriculture has shaped both the landscape and way of life in California and Ventura County. She and Nichols organized the first Art About Agriculture exhibit eighteen years ago to promote awareness of agriculture through art—from workers to water, from machinery to fields, to the food that fills our plates.

California is the nation’s leading agricultural state, producing more than 400 commodities and earning roughly $50 billion annually. More than half of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables consumed in the U.S. come from California. Crops thrive here for many of the same reasons artists do: year-round sunshine, fertile soil, and a mostly Mediterranean climate. Yet California agriculture also faces serious challenges, including fewer farms, water scarcity, global competition, and suburban development.

Ventura County has been called Southern California’s “last great agricultural landscape,” the result of deliberate local land-use policies designed to contain urban growth. More than a quarter of the county’s 1.2 million acres is agricultural land, with an estimated annual production value exceeding $2 billion. Ventura County’s top crops—including strawberries, lemons, and avocados—must be harvested by hand, employing more than 40,000 local farm workers whose labor sustains this vital industry.

Art About Agriculture invites you to take a closer look and to think more deeply about the life and land we cultivate.  

Below is a sampling of artworks featured in the exhibition. Click on any image to enlarge.

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.

On view November 15, 2025, to March 8, 2026

Inspired by Iowa artist Rose Frantzen's acclaimed 2005 series Portrait of Maquoketa, two Santa Paula artists embarked on a similar creative journey in their own hometown, calling it The Santa Paula Portrait Project. Beginning in January 2011, photographer John Nichols and painter Gail Pidduck spent two years creating portraits of people from across the community. Together, they produced more than 60 works, which were first exhibited at the Santa Paula Art Museum in 2013. Since then, the show has traveled to venues both locally and nationally.

Like Frantzen, Nichols and Pidduck sought to democratize portraiture by featuring everyday citizens who might not otherwise commission a portrait. The project encouraged the artists to open their hearts to their neighbors, resulting in a body of work that celebrates both the ordinary and the extraordinary facets of small-town life.

Below is a sampling of artworks featured in the exhibit. Click on any image to enlarge.