Current Exhibitions
“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.
"Plein Air Visions" Presented by the California Art Club
On view May 10, 2025, to September 7, 2025
The California Art Club is one of the oldest, largest, and most active art organizations in the country. Founded in Los Angeles in 1909 by a small group of California Impressionist painters, the CAC now has members worldwide, including artists, art students, patrons, and collectors who value the practices of traditional fine arts in the fields of painting, drawing, and sculpture.
The California Impressionist style of painting flourished in the years between 1900 and 1930, during a time when California’s population, including its artistic community, was booming. California Impressionists borrowed from the earlier French Impressionism movement, emphasizing the effects of natural light on the landscape, looser forms and brushwork, and a love of painting en plein air, or outdoors. (California’s idyllic beauty and perpetual sunshine allow for year-round plein air painting.)
With the rise of modernism after 1930, traditional landscape painting fell out of favor, but it experienced a revival in the 1980s. The California Art Club looked to its founders for inspiration and reasserted itself as a community of artists working in a range of styles and media who exhibit together, exchange ideas, and support one another.
While not without its challenges (weather, insects, hauling gear), painting outdoors is a rewarding, multisensory experience that inspires a more accurate understanding of colors and light in nature. It requires artists to work more efficiently and lends a greater sense of feeling and authenticity to their work.
“Plein Air Visions” features two dozen current members of the Los Angeles and Malibu/Ventura Chapters of CAC. Their works celebrate the preeminence of the plein air technique in capturing the light and colors of California’s coastal and urban landscape, with scenes stretching from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles.
Featured artists include Christine Beirne, Charlton Chen, Jim Darin, Karl Dempwolf, Erin Dertner, Jessica Falcone, Mardilan Georgio, Karen Glancy, Gabriel Islas, Nora Koerber, Lisa La Mer, Frank Lennartz, Rosina Maize, Fernando Micheli, Mikyoung Osburn, Anette Power, Carolyn Romer, Dan Schultz, Libby Smith, Laura Wambsgans, Nina Warner, Sharon Weaver, Karen Winters, and Carol Zepke.
Learn more about the California Art Club at www.californiaartclub.org
