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Painting Through the Pandemic by Steven Libowitz
MONTECITO JOURNAL34 C laudia Hoag McGarry has been involved in writing and literature for decades. Her resumé includes more than a dozen screenplays, several novels and, more recently, a handful of theatrical plays as well as 30 years of serving as a Santa Barbara City College English skills teacher.
Then COVID-19 arrived, shut down just about everything, and McGarry found her creativity careening in an entirely unexpected direction.
“I started painting on Day 1 of the lockdown,” said McGarry, noting she’d never trained as an artist and had only sold a few paintings during her college days at UC Santa Cruz 45-plus years ago. “But something just happened when we started staying at home and I just started painting for fun. Now I can’t stop.”
That’s partly because when she posted a couple of her works on her social media sites on Facebook (www. facebook.com/claudia.h.mcgarry) and Instagram (@claudiahoag) to share with friends how she’d been spending those early self-quarantine days, the paintings sold instantly.
“Honestly, I am in shock. I’m painting almost every day and my living room has turned into an art studio.”
The seeds for McGarry’s new obsession were planted about a year ago when she won a silent auction for art supplies in a raffle at SBCC, a bounty that included lots of paints and brushes. Then her sister gave her a bunch more art supplies for her birthday, which came at the beginning of the stay-athome order. The timing was perfect.
“I had just finished a couple of writing projects so I wanted a break from that,” she explained. “It was just for fun and just for me, but when I posted them, people started asking if they were for sale, which I hadn’t even considered. Then I started getting multiple offers. I mean, it’s crazy.”
McGarry is calling her series of paintings her “Quarantine Collection,” which as of the weekend had soared past 40, with more than three-quarters already spoken for. “I paint almost every day, and give each one of them a name, and then people just snap them up as soon as I post them.”
McGarry, who works in a combination of watercolor and acrylic – her own technique, she said, applied to heavy-duty watercolor paper – said she “just had the idea to try it, even though I hadn’t done any art at all in decades.
“I think it’s just something about being older that liberated me to try new things. So I went to town trying things out and I guess people like it.”
Steven Libowitz has reported on the arts and entertainment for more than 30 years; he has contributed to the Montecito Journal for more than 10 years.
Sheltering in Place but Pulling Inspiration From Everywhere
The ideas for the subjects come from all sorts of inspirations, McGarry said.
“I watched Free Willy the other night, so I did one of a whale. Then I talked with a friend in Arizona, so I painted one of the cacti. It just comes to me, whatever I’m thinking about. Usually at night I have an idea of what I want to paint the next day, but sleep on it, and in the morning I know much more and get to work.”
Friends and fans have also started asking McGarry for particular pieces, commissioning her to create works to help them through this period of isolation.
“A friend in New York asked me to do one of the city because she hasn’t been out of her apartment, and another one wanted me to paint the Santa Barbara Mission for her family who just love Fiesta (Pequena).”
Other times, someone asks if she has painted a subject they’re interested in right after she completes one that fits. That happened with a lighthouse, among other subjects, she said.
“Someone told me I’m channeling something, which I don’t understand, but it’s been eerie the connections that are happening,” McGarry said.
McGarry prices each of the paintings, which take her four to five hours to complete, at $200, a price point that, along with the vivid colors that characterize all of the works, has helped them move quickly.
“It’s a nice chunk of cash that I wasn’t expecting at all. But the bills, the cleaning, everything in the house is suffering because I’m just painting all day. I got five commissions for Mother’s Day alone, and I’m painting like crazy so I can get them in the mail in time to arrive before Sunday. My daughter told me not to get stressed doing it. But I won’t. I get up, I paint, I post it, and if it sells, great. I just want them to make people happy.”
Meanwhile, McGarry’s latest screenplay, a romantic comedy co-written with Sheila Murphy
called Dying to Meet You – which she said was about two best friends who crash funerals of middle aged women like them in order to meet the widowers – “like Wedding Crashers meets Book Club” – was completed just before the coronavirus caused everything to shut down in Hollywood. “So we haven’t gotten it read by anybody yet, but we think Rob Lowe would be perfect to play the male lead.”
If the pandemic fades enough to allow for audiences, her new play, Breaking the Code, is set to premiere at Center Stage Theater in mid-August. It’s also a rom-com, about a 48-yearold woman who meets a young Muslim man sitting on a park bench in New York City, and they fall in love.
“People ask me if it comes from my life. I kind of have a crush on the UPS guy, but that’s about it.”
Virtual Visual Arts, Plus Chances to Actually Visit
This issue arrives on May 7, which, in normal times, would have been a time for art lovers to gather downtown on lower State Street and nearby blocks to partake in the gallery, museum, and boutique self-guided tour known as 1st Thursday. That would’ve meant huge crowds jamming the two big open spaces at Sullivan Goss, the well-known gallery on Anapamu Street, to view the latest opening and sip on glasses of wine while hobnobbing with the artistic elite.
COVID-19 has clamped down on that, of course, with everyone heeding to strict lockdown rules outside of essential businesses to prevent the spread of the virus. But Sullivan Goss has announced that the gallery will open its two new exhibitions not only virtually – as has nearly every major museum and art gallery in town since mid-March – but will also welcome actual in-person visits to its downtown space.
Within pandemic parameters, that is. Individuals or cohabitating fam
ilies can make one-hour appointments to see Angela Perko’s “Just Another Pretty Picture,” 17 paintings “stretching across time and place and exploding with abundance and allegory,” as well as UCSB MFA students’ collaborative “20/20” project, comprised of contemporary drawing, painting, and sculpture with works by Eric Beltz, Ann Diener, Cathy Ellis, Yumiko Glover, Nathan Hayden, Mary Heebner, Madeleine Eve Ignon, Elisa Ortega Montilla, R. Nelson Parrish, Tom Pazderka, and Maria Rendon. Phoebe Brunner’s exhibition “A Wild Delight” has been briefly extended in order to give potential buyers a chance to see the works on site, not just online. Appointments are available 9 am to 5 pm daily. Visit www.sullivangoss. com.
Back in the academic art world, the AD&A Museum at UCSB has launched a preview of “Field Day,” its annual Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition. The pre-show features projects in progress and studio shots, revealing the process of creating works for the show that includes sculpture, photography, installations, video, and painting. The exhibit itself hits the museum’s website at 5:30 pm on Friday, May 15, accompanied by a live video featuring talks with the six graduating artists: Serene Blumenthal,
Kio Griffith, Megan Koth, Marshall
Sharpe, Thomas Stoeckinger, and David Wesley White. Visit www. museum.ucsb.edu.
‘Odyssey’ at the Opera
With its special streaming presentations of main stage operas on pandemic pause, Opera Santa Barbara takes a youthful turn, offering an online reprise of the culmination of last summer’s Santa Barbara Youth Opera two-week camp: a production that brings Homer’s epic tale to life via Ben Moore and Kelly Rourke’s Odyssey. The livestream of the kids’ caper takes place at 3:30 pm on Tuesday, May 12, on Facebook (https://www.facebook. com/operasantabarbara, where you can also view OSB’s weekly hosting of Corks and Composers) and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/ OperaSantaBarbara). •MJ
