Four Carmel Abstractionists

The tradition of California plein-air painting perhaps reached its pinnacle in Northern California around Carmel and the surrounding communities. The association was so strong, that it has almost typecast the artistic community to those who subsequently followed or reacted against the movement. For many, the pendulum swings more subtly between the two, and for painter JOHNNY APODACA it served merely as a starting point. Apodaca received his formal art training at the McNay Art Institute in San Antonio, Texas, where he studied the tenets of Abstract Expressionism with his influential teacher, Reginald Rowe. Among the lessons learned, he quotes, was “to not paint like they did 100 years ago.” When Apodaca came to Carmel in 1972, he fell in love with the natural beauty of the region, while seeking to remain true to his teacher’s advice. Thirty-six years later, Apodaca describes his process as a synthesis of the two, bringing plein-air studies into the studio where he “enlarges, tweaks, scrapes, splatters and expressively transforms” the once familiar imagery. His current series of paintings is inspired by the low profile of Monterey’s Mt. Toro as well as the influence of visiting the former residence of renowned California symbolist, Gottardo Piazzoni. With a reverence to the heritage of California art, countered with an immersion in the contemporary climate, including three trips to recent Venice Biennales, he concludes, “my job is to continue and add to that legacy.”

A former stockbroker, PATRICIA QUALLS’ life changed significantly after moving to Carmel in 1980, where she continues to work in a large studio just outside of the city. Her early experimentations were influenced by her degree in philosophy and as a means to, in the artist’s words, “get out of my head and other people’s heads, and to take myself less seriously.” After a few years of personal explorations, Qualls was prompted by the gift of a book on the Bay Area Abstractionists to take on the quest of a self-guided education, a sort-of reverse osmosis from West to East of AbEx and reactions to the movement, including such personally influential figures as Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. The creative process continues to be an intuitive process for the artist, as Qualls likens her studio to a creative laboratory where nothing is planned in advance. “I buy paint by the gallons,” she describes, “I pour it, I scape it, I move it.” As to working outside of a major urban center, the artist wouldn’t have it any other way, “When I’m visiting a city, I never dream of painting in the city… the isolation suits my soul.”

BARBARA KREITMAN came to the West Coast at a much younger age, moving with her family to San Jose at the age of eight, where she later received her degree in Fine Arts at nearby San Jose State University. The painter notes a common theme of a painterly and expressionist approach among her peers in the Carmel/Monterey region. Her own myriad influences include many Northern California and Bay Area artists, from internationally recognized figures such as Richard Diebenkorn to those whose recognition remains closer to home, such as John Saccaro, Selden Giles from the Society of Six, and “the sophisticated color palette of E. Charlton Fortune, and the moodiness of William Ritschell and S. C. Yuan.” The abstraction of Kreitman’s work balances an architectonic layering of forms, hints of figuration, and the key ingredient of color, inspired by the “continuous play of light” she takes in on her daily walks to the ocean. “My paintings show my passion for color, she describes, “the way various colors play off of each other so that the eye perceives energy with motion or, alternatively, more calm and meditative.”

PETER K. BROOKS spent 30 years in New York working as a banker before relocating to the Monterey peninsula in 1995. Though never formally trained as an artist, Brooks credits the urban edge of his work to his former life in New York where he spent many of his off-hours investigating the artists of the New York school and seeking to discover “what those fellows at the Cedar Tavern spent all night talking about.” Speaking with the artist on his second career, on which he has focused for the past 20 years, he notes the continued influence of AbEx, singling out Joan Mitchell as a key inspiration. This is not to say the beauty of the region has not left an impression, as he notes, “it is hard to muster up a lot of angst here, it is spectacular.” Brooks describes his style as an exploration of process. He often produces works in series, which are united by distinct choices of brush and palette knife work, and unique combinations of hues culled from his own premixed batches of color.

Originally published in art ltd. magazine (Nov/Dec 2014)