PACE faculty member Marcia Burtt is one of the artists featured in a fundraiser show in Santa Barbara, and four notable Southern artists get the spotlight in a Florida exhibition.
The Oak Group, an organization of California painters who work to preserve land from undue development, hold at least two benefit shows a year, and this year’s batch includes “Walk With Nature,” on view March 4 through 29 in Santa Barbara Central Library’s Faulkner Gallery. Marcia Burtt, Chris Chapman, Ray Hunter, and Larry Iwerks are among the featured artists in this nearly 100-piece show. The Oak Group will donate proceeds of this exhibition to the restoration of a meadow at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden that has been compromised by ill-advised plantings and extraneous paving.
“In Bloom,” by Ray Hunter, watercolor
“It’s amazing how much money we’ve been able to donate to good causes over the years,” says Burtt. “If nothing else, we have made visual records of a lot of places. But in fact we’ve been helpful in saving a number of open spaces. Some are now public parks, some are agricultural land that would otherwise have been built on. The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is special to me personally because we used to live five minutes from it and I painted there very frequently. Our own garden was patterned after it in many ways.”
“Lace & Sparkle — White Egret,” by Mary Erickson, oil on panel, 24 x 18 in.
Meanwhile, in Casselberry, Florida, the Casselberry Art House is hosting an exhibition of paintings by “The Florida Four” — Mary Erickson, Bill Farnsworth, Morgan Samuel Price, and Hodges Soileau, March 30 through April 4. Each of the featured artists will paint a demonstration at some point during the show.
