A Sense of Place at Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley

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A Sense of Place Jeffrey Beauchamp . Kim Ford Kitz . Kristen Garneau . Suzanne Onodera . Carole Pierce

23 Sunnyside Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 415.384.8288 seagergray.com

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A Sense of Place

Jeffrey Beauchamp . Kim Ford Kitz . Kristen Garneau . Suzanne Onodera . Carole Pierce Exhibition Dates: August 1 - August 28, 2014 Reception for the Artists: Friday, August 8, 6 to 8 pm Front Cover: Jeffrey Beauchamp, Never Too Proud to Rock that Hillbilly Lingerie, oil on canvs, 60 x 60” Back Cover: Suzanne Onodera, Ocean Fire, oil on canvas, 48 x 46”

Photography Credits: Carole Pierce - photography by Charles Kennard Kristen Garneau - photography by Craig Kolb

Direct inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 23 Sunnyside Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 415.384.8288 art@seagergray.com

All Rights Reserved

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The New Day Drags its Heavy Skirts oil on canvas 36 x 42�

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Jeffrey Beauchamp No Way To Finish These Deep-Fried Wiffle Balls oil on canvas 60 x 48�

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Jeffrey Beauchamp Flying brushstrokes of color inhabit Jeffrey Beauchamp’s paintings, the exuberant marks giving way to recognizable bits of landscape.

Beauchamp is a trickster with prodigious skills and a wry sense of humor. He could, should he choose to, paint like a Renaissance painter or Vermeer spiced with bits of Gerhardt Richter and Odd Nerdrum. Instead he lures you in to a more magical space where color rains down like confetti and he sets you down wherever he chooses.

Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Beauchamp’s talents extend themselves to music and writing. He is a voracious reader and student of art history, his large collection of art books often open in his studio. An artistic time traveler, his teachers are the masters from both contemporary and historic epochs. Beauchamp received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has enjoyed a long exhibition history beginning with his frequent exhibitions at Susan Cummins Gallery in Mill Valley in the early 90’s.

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Jeffrey Beauchamp

Jeffrey Beauchamp

Never Too Proud to Rock that Hililbilly Lingerie (left)

Frosted Sonoma (above)

oil on canvas 60 x 60”

oil on canvas 30 x 48”

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Kristen Garneau Although the paintings of Kristen Garneau begin with actual experiences in nature, she is influenced as much by Abstract Expressionist masters as she is by the more traditional landscape painters. She simplifies forms and reduces shapes, allowing her to explore more freely. She is interested in what she calls the “in between times” at dawn or dusk or when fog rolls in or a light rain diffuses or intensifies the light.

Kristen Garneau

Garneau grew up in California’s Contra Costa County riding horses along the watershed lands that inpired a lifelong love of nature. In the 60’s she enrolled at the California College of Arts and Crafts, completing two years there. She feels that it was 20 years later, however, that she finally found her voice. She credits her mentor Chester Arnold with whom she studied over a 12 year period at the College of Marin with helping her develop her own style, softening colors and shapes and finding the subtle magic of particular times of day.

The Soft Rain (left) oil on canvas 48 x 48”

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Kristen Garneau Field Forms oil on canvas 34 x 40�

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Kristen Garneau Tidal Break oil on linen 20 x 18�

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Kristen Garneau Snow on the Fields oil on linen 16 x 20�

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Kristen Garneau Henry’s Lake oil, glue, varnish on four panels 18 x 72”

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Kim Ford Kitz Delineation oil on canvas 40 x 30�

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Kim Ford Kitz Kim Ford Kitz likes to make sketches from landscapes and photographs, figuring out the basic shapes and divisions of space she finds there. Some of her references are from black and white satellite photos that she has cropped and stretched into new compositions. She discovers the “bones� of the painting in this way and the process gives her work a quality akin to the central valley works of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud. These are abstract paintings inspired by what is actually there.

After the drawing, comes the paint. Rich oil paints articulate the contours and shapes. Kitz loves working in oil and moves it effortlessly around the canvas. The rich textures are developed to amplify the layers of color beneath to represent growth and erosion.

Kitz graduated from the Academy of Art University with a BFA in painting and drawing in May of 2005 and showed that same year at Donna Seager Gallery in San Rafael.

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Kim Ford Kitz Vicinity oil on canvas, 2 panels (left and right page) 40 x 80�

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Kim Ford Kitz Summer Village oil on panel 48 x 36�

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Kim Ford Kitz Limantour oil on canvas 16 x 16�

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Suzanne Onodera Suzanne Onodera has a strong connection to the landscapes in Northern California where she grew up and spent most of her adult years. Craggy coast lines, undulating mountain ranges, drifting fog banks, fire charred hillsides and the pools and rivers stricken by drought all find their way into her work. Although she is inspired by land, place and nature, all of her imagery is invented. It is detached from any historical or specific link to time or place. Ultimately, this work is about transcendental beauty and connectivity between humans and nature, and to the self and the sublime.

Onodera works to create the mood on her canvases through the subtle layering of various shades lending the works a sense of depth and atmosphere.

Suzanne Onodera Lush oil on canvas 50 x 46�

Suzanne Onodera attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for two years and finished her BFA, Painting, with High Distinction at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA.

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Suzanne Onodera The Hunt oil on canvas 48 x 46�

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Suzanne Onodera Ocean Fire oil on canvas 48 x 46�

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Suzanne Onodera Solitude Path oil on canvas 25 x 25�

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Carole Pierce The paintings of Carole Pierce result from a lifelong fascination with the sky. They have the appearance of landscape, but the artist concerns herself, not with the solidity of the land, but the elusiveness of mist, shadow and light. They are fleeting moments of a particular quality of sky that have the power to make mortals stop and look up. The locations are ambivalent. They are less specific to place than they are to the magic of sky, like the electrically charged energy of the air just before a storm.

Carole Pierce was born in Dallas, Texas. Her father was a pilot in the Air Force and taught flying when Carole was a little girl. She has memories of looking at the sky and watching his plane tip its wing as a way of saying hello. The fascination for sky and the elusive Carole Pierce

quality of air charged with light became a part of her life. Carole

Blooming oil on canvas 60 x 60�

moved to California in 1981 and lived in Marin County. She attended the CCAC in Oakland and received her Masters in Printmaking.

She has gallery representation in New York, Dallas, San Francisco, southern California, Montana and New Mexico.

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Carole Pierce Morning Heat oil on linen 36 x 48�

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Carole Pierce Filtered Light oil on canvas 22 x 22�

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Carole Pierce Transforming Fire oil on canvas 24 x 24�

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