California View Fine Art -- Plein Air, Impressionism, Early California, paintings and antiques bought and sold. CaliforniaView Fine Arts is a new name to art collectors, but an organization that has been dedicated to the collection and restoration of Early California Art since the late 1970's. Plein air painting is making a huge comeback in California some 75 years after the Early California Impressionists dominated the California art scene. Following in the tradition of the French Impressionists and Post Impressionist such as Monet, Cezanne and Van Gogh, painters are dragging their boards, canvases, and French easels into the hills in record numbers. There are six established art organizations and numerous informal groups in the State that champion plein air painting and hold paint outs, competitions, fund raisers, workshops and exhibitions. Each group reflects its origins in early California traditional and representational art. Painting for the sheer joy of it, the new plein air painters have added another component - they use their art to promote environmental and historical preservation. The newest of these groups is the "Outsiders." The Outsiders are seven top San Francisco Bay Area plein air painters. The name derives from the form of painting they do - outdoor or plein air - and also from their placement away from more traditional landscape and scene painters. They are: Nikki Basch Davis, Warren Dreher, Pam Glover, Ray Jackson, Judy Molyneaux, Bill Rushton and Jerrold Turner. Colorists first, their bold brush work and liberal use of paint echoes the Fauvist style of their precedents - The Society of Six - who were active in the Bay Area in the early part of this Century. Founding Outsider member, Pam Glover, painted with the last surviving member of the Society of Six - Louis Siegriest and his son Lundy - in the 1970's. Like the Six, the Outsiders often paint together for camaraderie and feedback while they rapidly capture in paint the rural scenes and funky old towns just minutes from the bustle of San Francisco. The Outsiders will promote plein air painting through group shows and fund raisers to preserve open space in the San Francisco Bay area. Outsider Influences: The Society of Six Who were the Society of Six? The Six were a group of East Bay plein air painters who joined together in 1917 to form a dynamic and mutually beneficial painting association that lasted until the Great Depression. Members were Selden Gile, Louis Siegriest, Maurice Logan, August Gay, Bernard von Eichman and William Clapp. Their work was characterized first and foremost by bold color, unpretentious subject matter and a spontaneous and generous application of paint. They were more Fauves than Impressionists and were definitely "outsiders" to the mainstream of Northern California landscape painting at the time which was dominated by Arthur Matthew's classical, tonalist paintings and William Keith's rather dark, romantic landscapes. Who influenced the Six? The Panama Pacific Exhibition of 1915 at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco jump-started the Six. For the first time they saw the paintings of the French Impressionists and also the American Impressionists who had been painting on the East Coast in the new style since the 1890's. Selden Gile and the others were dazzled by the bright colors and spontaneity of the brush work. Northern California had been isolated from the currents of modernism because of its remoteness and the aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 which saw many artists move to Southern California. Rambunctious, fun-loving and mostly self taught, the Six literally sloshed through the mud flats of Oakland and scrambled over the hills around the East Bay to practice their new-found techniques. Days often ended at leader Selden Gile's house where they critiqued each other's work and ate his home-cooked meals accompanied by abundant brew. The Depression signaled an end to the productive years of the Six as a group, and each went his separate way. Their first major recognition by art professionals and the general public wasn't until 1972 when the Oakland Museum held a retrospective. Like Panama Pacific in 1915, this show had far-reaching consequences throughout the painting community. For an in-depth study of the Six with extensive color reproductions of their work see The Society of Six: California Colorists by Nancy Boas. Source:Quoted:Http://www.thepleinairscene.com/magazine/march1999.html