FINE ART AT THE INN

Grove #8
Mick Reinman
Ojai, CA

Tangerine
Kathy Leeds
Ojai, CA

Chime
Scott Gordon
Ventura, CA

Olive Branches
Sara Prince
Ojai, CA

Philodendron Diptych
Kathy Leeds
Ojai, CA

Untitled
Stevie Howell
Los Angeles, CA

Untitled
Nina Menconi
Ojai, CA

Poppies I
Jeremy Rendina
Ojai, CA

Folklore - by Mary Neville
2023
Mixed Media on Canvas, 37 x 37 Framed
Location: Concierge Credenza 
$3,900

Worlds Apart - by Mary Neville
2019
Mixed Media on Canvas, 37 x 37 Framed
Location: Concierge Hallway 
$3,900

Peripheral Vision - by Mary Neville
2018
Mixed Media on Canvas, 41 x 41 Framed
Location: Concierge Hallway
$4,500

Solitude - by Mary Neville
2022
Mixed Media on Canvas, 61 x 49 Framed
Location: Lobby Entry Desk Hallway
$7,200

Grove Series
Mick Reinman
Ojai, CA

Still Life with Vessels
Carolyn Fox
Ojai, CA

Wave (taupe)
Julia Canright
San Diego, CA

Scallop Burnt Orange
Julia Canright
San Diego, CA

Blue Garden with Heron
Carolyn Fox
Ojai, CA

Matilija Poppy
Lauren Ross
Santa Barbara, CA

Driving Range - by Mary Neville
2022
Mixed Media on Canvas, 48 x 60 Framed
Location: Lobby Reception Desk

The Nature of Things - by Pamela Grau
Mixed media, 54 x 96
Location - Lobby Entry

Pamela Grau searched inside and out for images and materials that would support her creative path. In 2009, while being treated for cancer, a new body of work emerged that was devoid of storytelling. The core of this current work is about spirit contained within design, color, and texture. It is about expansion and containment. The work has a mystical and magical component. It involves our most primal responses to nature.

CC 2 - by Chase Langford
Oil on canvas, 40 x 30
Location: Neff Lounge Entry Console

Leaving his childhood home in the Midwest, Chase moved west to study cartography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and to pursue an eventual career creating maps for faculty at UCLA. Over time, his work became more contemporary and more abstract, and Chase’s creative freedom exploded.

Embracing an understanding that it is better to embrace rather than deny one’s DNA, Chase’s paintings echo their geographic foundation. While remaining true to his essence, his more recent work represents a significant shift from the two-dimensional map view to an abstract composition that implies a three-dimensional space.

“Imagine the effect of spending much of a lifetime intimately tracing coasts, rivers, highways, and more. Inevitably the visual rhythms of geography largely created my visual sensibility, that is, my sense of what works or does not work visually. I would dare say it has even seeped into my DNA.”

Jacaranda Pods - by Pamela Grau
Mixed media, 12 x 12
Location - Lobby Bookshelf

Pamela Grau searched inside and out for images and materials that would support her creative path. In 2009, while being treated for cancer, a new body of work emerged that was devoid of storytelling. The core of this current work is about spirit contained within design, color, and texture. It is about expansion and containment. The work has a mystical and magical component. It involves our most primal responses to nature.

The Virtues VI - by Shawn Dulaney
Acrylic on paper, 22 x 30 inches
Location: Olivella Entry

Shawn Dulaney’s paintings, layered constructions or color merging to form spacious abstractions, have been described by William Zimmer of the New York Times as belong to “a very strong tradition, that of 19th century Northern European Romanticism in which nature was seen as corresponding to human emotional states.” Zimmer says of her work, “Ms. Dulaney makes it clear that her inner life is very much a part of each painting, and this alone distinguishes it from most abstraction… Shawn Dulaney is deliberately out for grandeur. But she is also out for intimacy. Her paintings take advantage of their innate ambiguity and declare themselves to be very current in the thinking that lies behind them.”

Her pieces are subtle, lush with color and a depth of detail that engages the imagination and conveys a weight of emotional connection to atmospheres and places. Her surfaces, as described by Dominick Lombardi -- also of the New York Times, are “exquisitely painted” and “a pleasure to see.” She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Collective Consciousness - by Pamela Grau
Mixed media, 42 x 77
Location - Terrace Corridor

Pamela Grau searched inside and out for images and materials that would support her creative path. In 2009, while being treated for cancer, a new body of work emerged that was devoid of storytelling. The core of this current work is about spirit contained within design, color, and texture. It is about expansion and containment. The work has a mystical and magical component. It involves our most primal responses to nature.

Notation III - by Shawn Dulaney
Acrylic on paper, 22 x 30 inches
Location: Olivella Entry

Shawn Dulaney’s paintings, layered constructions or color merging to form spacious abstractions, have been described by William Zimmer of the New York Times as belong to “a very strong tradition, that of 19th century Northern European Romanticism in which nature was seen as corresponding to human emotional states.” Zimmer says of her work, “Ms. Dulaney makes it clear that her inner life is very much a part of each painting, and this alone distinguishes it from most abstraction… Shawn Dulaney is deliberately out for grandeur. But she is also out for intimacy. Her paintings take advantage of their innate ambiguity and declare themselves to be very current in the thinking that lies behind them.”

Her pieces are subtle, lush with color and a depth of detail that engages the imagination and conveys a weight of emotional connection to atmospheres and places. Her surfaces, as described by Dominick Lombardi -- also of the New York Times, are “exquisitely painted” and “a pleasure to see.” She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

She Is Singing For You - by Danae Anderson
Mixed media on panel, 24 x 24 inches
Location: Olivella Dining Room 2

Movement and music vitally inflect the improvised choreography of the paintings. The relationship with the “canvas” is intense and instinctive, accessing and allowing marks that arise through the uncensored conscious. Chance associations arise from the immediacy/physicality of intuition and observation. The residue of these actions reveals a visual narrative that documents and honors human experience. A deep overlay of play, language, events, dreams, objects, the self, the ordinary, sense/nonsense, the seen/unseen, the ancestors and progeny, memory and daily experience is recorded.

In indigenous cultures, things done (the making of objects: art) and things happening (music and dance) are one. Action/process become the principal mode of thought. The artist is called to respond to things happening, and so documents the imperatives of life.

She Did She Said - by Danae Anderson
Mixed media on panel, 24 x 75 inches
Location: Olivella Dining Room 1

Movement and music vitally inflect the improvised choreography of the paintings. The relationship with the “canvas” is intense and instinctive, accessing and allowing marks that arise through the uncensored conscious. Chance associations arise from the immediacy/physicality of intuition and observation. The residue of these actions reveals a visual narrative that documents and honors human experience. A deep overlay of play, language, events, dreams, objects, the self, the ordinary, sense/nonsense, the seen/unseen, the ancestors and progeny, memory and daily experience is recorded.

In indigenous cultures, things done (the making of objects: art) and things happening (music and dance) are one. Action/process become the principal mode of thought. The artist is called to respond to things happening, and so documents the imperatives of life.

Look What's Happening - by Danae Anderson

Mixed media on panel, 24 x 24 inches

Location: Olivella Dining Room 2

Movement and music vitally inflect the improvised choreography of the paintings. The relationship with the “canvas” is intense and instinctive, accessing and allowing marks that arise through the uncensored conscious. Chance associations arise from the immediacy/physicality of intuition and observation. The residue of these actions reveals a visual narrative that documents and honors human experience. A deep overlay of play, language, events, dreams, objects, the self, the ordinary, sense/nonsense, the seen/unseen, the ancestors and progeny, memory and daily experience is recorded.

In indigenous cultures, things done (the making of objects: art) and things happening (music and dance) are one. Action/process become the principal mode of thought. The artist is called to respond to things happening, and so documents the imperatives of life.

September III - by Karl Pilato
Monotype on paper, 42 x 30 inches
Location: Olivella Private Dining Room 1

“My abstract paintings, prints, and drawings evoke nature as encompassing, vast, and always changing.

“The intuitively drawn mark is the foundation of my work. A mark’s particular character leads to following gestures, which reflect, contrast, obscure, or enhance it. My work comes out of basic tactile experiences of the medium like varying pressure to carve a line through space or bumping a loaded brush over another color to form a flickering complexity. Painting for me is feeling the light and space that emerge from nuanced relationships of gesture.

“Rhythmic structure emerges from my process of building areas of density and openness. These contrasting areas weave through one another. I look for all the marks to fit in place, to feel balanced, to be in continual motion, and to evoke the light and space of nature.

September IV - by Karl Pilato
Monotype on paper, 42 x 30 inches
Location: Olivella Private Dining Room 1

“My abstract paintings, prints, and drawings evoke nature as encompassing, vast, and always changing.

“The intuitively drawn mark is the foundation of my work. A mark’s particular character leads to following gestures, which reflect, contrast, obscure, or enhance it. My work comes out of basic tactile experiences of the medium like varying pressure to carve a line through space or bumping a loaded brush over another color to form a flickering complexity. Painting for me is feeling the light and space that emerge from nuanced relationships of gesture.

“Rhythmic structure emerges from my process of building areas of density and openness. These contrasting areas weave through one another. I look for all the marks to fit in place, to feel balanced, to be in continual motion, and to evoke the light and space of nature.

B0926 - by Rhia Bahraini
Mixed media on panel, 48 x 48 x 2 inches
Location: Olivella Dining Room 2

“I use a variety of mixed media to create my current abstract works. There is a driving vision behind each of my pieces and the process of bringing that vision to life is about finding the rhythm in the moment. It’s extremely physical. The brush strokes are intuitive and spontaneous. I apply and remove layers of paint to reveal some elements while keeping others elusive. There is a peaceful energy that runs throughout my work. Much of that has to do with using the colors of the earth as a way for the viewer to reconnect to self.

“The finished paintings open up a mythic space for the viewer inviting them to cross from one world into another. The painter Mark Rothko said, “A picture lives by companionship and quickening in the eyes of a sensitive observer.” I believe that an active viewer is what gives paintings life and what allows for a dialogue between the two to take place.”

B0924 - by Rhia Bahraini
Mixed media on panel, 48 x 48 x 2 inches
Location: Olivella Dining Room 2

“I use a variety of mixed media to create my current abstract works. There is a driving vision behind each of my pieces and the process of bringing that vision to life is about finding the rhythm in the moment. It’s extremely physical. The brush strokes are intuitive and spontaneous. I apply and remove layers of paint to reveal some elements while keeping others elusive. There is a peaceful energy that runs throughout my work. Much of that has to do with using the colors of the earth as a way for the viewer to reconnect to self.

“The finished paintings open up a mythic space for the viewer inviting them to cross from one world into another. The painter Mark Rothko said, “A picture lives by companionship and quickening in the eyes of a sensitive observer.” I believe that an active viewer is what gives paintings life and what allows for a dialogue between the two to take place.”

Buoyancy - by John Belingheri
Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
Location: Olivella Sunroom

John Belingheri grew up in the desert of Nevada in the middle of open space. There is an expression of the light and repetition of pattern that he experienced in his early life and currently in his urban surroundings in the San Francisco Bay Area. His paintings are the result of the interaction between thought and material.

“My paintings are a reflection of what i am struggling with and thinking about, both in my conscious and my unconscious thoughts. Feeling with my gut, which has more nerve endings than the heart or brain.”

For John, the surface of the painting is as much a part of his painting as color or content. “I like the texture and feel of paint. I encourage the accidental scars of reworking in an effort to reach something that is beyond reach.”

Magenta Orange 1 - by Nellie King Solomon
Acrylic on Mylar, 66 x 66 inches

Location: Olivella Wine Room

“My paintings are spaces where energy moves matter. The paintings reflect my experiences of great western landscapes. California is a place where we are caught off guard, a place of chance and change. I paint it.

“I paint on sheets of Mylar laid flat on a 9 x 9-foot table. The Mylar tilts like a landscape. The topography below the Mylar helps generate the composition of each painting. The translucent surface of the Mylar allows the edges to disappear into the wall. Light penetrates directly through clear pools of medium to the wall beyond. The architecture of the wall is subverted.

“I make the space between things visible. The empty space allows motion. I paint what I know is there but cannot see.”

A common feature throughout are large, thick rings that don’t quite close; the shape is created with a graceful full-body gesture, a nod to Solomon’s early training as a dancer.

The influence of Solomon’s interest in the environment, and the increasing degradation of it, is increasingly obvious. These paintings are brave and bold.

ADD TO ITINERARY

The Universe - by Ivan Butorac
Digital print on paper, 30 x 45 inches
Location: Olivella Private Dining Room 1

Ivan’s artwork captures the raw organic beauty of plants and tree landscapes in today’s fragile environment. Ivan digitally transforms his photographs into art forms, and often uses repetition and symmetry to create surreal, haunting patterns and figures of nature that will leave a permanent imprint on your imagination.

Nature and love are his greatest inspiration.

“…it is so pure and there is no ego in it and everything is working out to perfection…we tend to mess up a lot of things, we all need more love for each other and mother nature.” – Ivan Butorac

Heavily influenced and encouraged by his artistic parents and an art-filled home, he experimented with a lot of media. Ivan attempted to paint, write, and draw, but discovered his true talents lay in collage and photography. He started taking pictures using his father’s and grandfather’s old camera equipment, and making collages out of old photos.

Untitled Diptych #1 - by Mazal/Mankus
Digital print on paper, 42 x 62 inches
Location: Olivella Private Dining Room 2

In 1990-91, Ricardo Mazal began to collaborate with photographer Gary Mankus. The two had known each other since the 1970s when they both worked in Chicago as graphic and industrial designers. In collaboration, Mazal and Mankus bonded their respective media. Mazal would paint onto a photo of Mankus’s. Mankus would rephotograph the image, which Mazal would then rework, and so on. Or Mankus would make time-exposure photographs of Mazal moving a light source over his paintings, and then Mazal would execute a drawing that mimicked the photo. If Mankus made a 20-second exposure, Mazal would do a 20-second drawing – the frame drawing and photograph together.

The most recent incarnation of their collaboration has resulted in the present series of Untitled Diptychs which juxtapose Mazal’s painterly technique with a Mankus photograph, both conjuring a speeding object blurred to abstraction.

Their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City; Galeria Maeght, Barcelona; Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale; Megan Fox Gallery, Santa Fe; MARCO Museum, Monterey, Mexico; Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe; Chiaroscuro, Santa Fe; Elins Eagles- Smith Gallery, San Francisco; and Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, Idaho.

Ricardo Mazal was born in Mexico City and moved to Barcelona, Spain in 1986. Since 1990 he has lived and worked in New York City, as well as Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mazal’s work explores the process of visual perception as it takes form in the human consciousness. His paintings depict the passage of time, not by illustrating events but by leaving their residue to dissipate in space. In the last decade, he has been honored with ten individual museum exhibitions including a retrospective at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo (MARCO) in Monterey. He has also shown at the Museo Nacional de Anthropologia, Mexico City, and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. KORA follows the direction begun by La Tumba de La Reina Roja (The Tomb of the Red Queen) inspired by an incredible archaeological find in the jumble near Palenque, Mexico; and Odenwald 1152, an exploration based on a unique “cemetery forest” near Michelstadt, Germany. The works that have resulted from his personal pilgrimage, or KORA, around Mount Kailash, in July 2009 are arguably some of the best of his incredible oeuvre. He is represented by Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC.

Gary Mankus was born in Chicago and is a graduate of the Institute of Design at IIT. This broad Bauhaus education has resulted in his exploration of several careers, including photography, design, fine art, and printmaking. He is known for his photography of the Midwest, including “Airshow” (solo exhibition at Chicago Cultural Center, 1993), and for his illustrative collage imagery produced for major corporations. Since 1990, Gary has collaborated with artist Ricardo Mazal on several experimental photographic projects. Since moving to Santa Fe in 2001, Gary found Santa Fe Editions, for the exploration of new mediums. His collaborative print projects include work with artists Robert Kelly, Caio Fonseca, Dirk De Bruycker, Sam Scott, and many others. His recent photograph-based work continues to explore the boundary that separates abstract and figurative, painting and photography. Additional work is featured in Photography: New Mexico, published by Fresco LLC.

Untitled Diptych #2 - by Mazal/Mankus
Digital print on paper, 54 x 81 inches
Location: Olivella Private Dining Room 1

In 1990-91, Ricardo Mazal began to collaborate with photographer Gary Mankus. The two had known each other since the 1970s when they both worked in Chicago as graphic and industrial designers. In collaboration, Mazal and Mankus bonded their respective media. Mazal would paint onto a photo of Mankus’s. Mankus would rephotograph the image, which Mazal would then rework, and so on. Or Mankus would make time-exposure photographs of Mazal moving a light source over his paintings, and then Mazal would execute a drawing that mimicked the photo. If Mankus made a 20-second exposure, Mazal would do a 20-second drawing – the frame drawing and photograph together.

The most recent incarnation of their collaboration has resulted in the present series of Untitled Diptychs which juxtapose Mazal’s painterly technique with a Mankus photograph, both conjuring a speeding object blurred to abstraction.

Their work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City; Galeria Maeght, Barcelona; Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale; Megan Fox Gallery, Santa Fe; MARCO Museum, Monterey, Mexico; Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe; Chiaroscuro, Santa Fe; Elins Eagles- Smith Gallery, San Francisco; and Anne Reed Gallery, Ketchum, Idaho.

Ricardo Mazal was born in Mexico City and moved to Barcelona, Spain in 1986. Since 1990 he has lived and worked in New York City, as well as Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mazal’s work explores the process of visual perception as it takes form in the human consciousness. His paintings depict the passage of time, not by illustrating events but by leaving their residue to dissipate in space. In the last decade, he has been honored with ten individual museum exhibitions including a retrospective at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo (MARCO) in Monterey. He has also shown at the Museo Nacional de Anthropologia, Mexico City, and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. KORA follows the direction begun by La Tumba de La Reina Roja (The Tomb of the Red Queen) inspired by an incredible archaeological find in the jumble near Palenque, Mexico; and Odenwald 1152, an exploration based on a unique “cemetery forest” near Michelstadt, Germany. The works that have resulted from his personal pilgrimage, or KORA, around Mount Kailash, in July 2009 are arguably some of the best of his incredible oeuvre. He is represented by Sundaram Tagore Gallery, NYC.

Gary Mankus was born in Chicago and is a graduate of the Institute of Design at IIT. This broad Bauhaus education has resulted in his exploration of several careers, including photography, design, fine art, and printmaking. He is known for his photography of the Midwest, including “Airshow” (solo exhibition at Chicago Cultural Center, 1993), and for his illustrative collage imagery produced for major corporations. Since 1990, Gary has collaborated with artist Ricardo Mazal on several experimental photographic projects. Since moving to Santa Fe in 2001, Gary found Santa Fe Editions, for the exploration of new mediums. His collaborative print projects include work with artists Robert Kelly, Caio Fonseca, Dirk De Bruycker, Sam Scott, and many others. His recent photograph-based work continues to explore the boundary that separates abstract and figurative, painting and photography. Additional work is featured in Photography: New Mexico, published by Fresco LLC.

Above and Below - by Andrea Ferrigno
37 x 61.5 inches
Location: Olivella Private Dining Room 2

“I have a symbiotic relationship of an intuitive and analytic approach to my image making. I think about the juxtaposition of the following assumed dichotomies: stillness and motion, matter and energy, experience and information and their synergy in space and time. I think about how form comes into being through time. I am largely inspired from scientific and mathematical ideas of the nature of reality. These concepts and ideas serve as a framework and a jumping-off point as my studio, a way of dreaming and visualizing within ready-made systems of belief. My practice derives ultimately to be open, and a space that I grant myself freedom to continually search, question, and push into new territory.

Day Bloom - by Mayme Kratz
Resin, popppu pods on panel, 30 x 30 inches
Location: Neff Lounge

Mayme Kratz’s current process, which includes sealing bones, seeds, or other biological matter in layers of resin, and then sanding back down through the resin to unearth portions of the objects, clearly stems from her childhood fascination with the natural world.

An atmospheric place of uncertain and potential is central to the work, a place where objects have lost their previous identity and the comfortable reassurance of function.

“I’m always searching for the light in the objects that I’m collecting, and finding a way to celebrate the life or light of that spirit…the ‘lost light’ is like trying to dig up or uncover something that you know is there…but you may not be able to see initially. It’s a way of exploring the transformation that takes place during the process of decay, and finding the beauty in that.”

Night Bloom - by Mayme Kratz
Resin, popppu pods on panel, 30 x 30 inches
Location: Neff Lounge

Mayme Kratz’s current process, which includes sealing bones, seeds, or other biological matter in layers of resin, and then sanding back down through the resin to unearth portions of the objects, clearly stems from her childhood fascination with the natural world.

An atmospheric place of uncertain and potential is central to the work, a place where objects have lost their previous identity and the comfortable reassurance of function.

“I’m always searching for the light in the objects that I’m collecting, and finding a way to celebrate the life or light of that spirit…the ‘lost light’ is like trying to dig up or uncover something that you know is there…but you may not be able to see initially. It’s a way of exploring the transformation that takes place during the process of decay, and finding the beauty in that.”

Paysage 25 – by Kenn Kotara
Mixed media on paper; 24 x 24 inches
Location: Corridor to Terrace

Kenn Kotara was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He creates landscape studies from impromptu sketches that he makes as he drives or bicycles around the countryside. Ken’s years of studying architecture influence the geometrical works he is well known for today.

“Drawing on paper is a time-honored tradition of noting by hand what the mind perceives through quick gestural marks on an extremely receptive substrate. My works on paper are inextricably connected, in that my thought processes at any given time will be worked out in an analogous manner.”

Paysage 32 – by Kenn Kotara
Digital print on paper; 22 x 22 inches
Location: Corridor to Terrace

Kenn Kotara was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He creates landscape studies from impromptu sketches that he makes as he drives or bicycles around the countryside. Ken’s years of studying architecture influence the geometrical works he is well known for today.

“Drawing on paper is a time-honored tradition of noting by hand what the mind perceives through quick gestural marks on an extremely receptive substrate. My works on paper are inextricably connected, in that my thought processes at any given time will be worked out in an analogous manner.”

Paysage 61 – by Kenn Kotara
Mixed media on paper; 24 x 24 inches
Location: Corridor to Terrace

Kenn Kotara was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. He creates landscape studies from impromptu sketches that he makes as he drives or bicycles around the countryside. Ken’s years of studying architecture influence the geometrical works he is well known for today.

“Drawing on paper is a time-honored tradition of noting by hand what the mind perceives through quick gestural marks on an extremely receptive substrate. My works on paper are inextricably connected, in that my thought processes at any given time will be worked out in an analogous manner.”