Exhibition: The Anne and Walon Green Collection: The Paintings of Channing Peake

Reception: July 1, 3-5pm; Opening Reception in the Betteravia Gallery South, immediately following the 2-3pm ribbon-cutting for remodeled Joseph Centeno Government Building

Hours: Free to the Public: Access through County Supervisor office

Location: Joseph Centeno Betteravia Government Center, 511 E. Lakeside, Santa Maria, CA

Image: Channing Peake, Horse and Man, 1959, oil on canvas; photo credit: Dante Sigismondi

The Anne and Walon Green Collection: The Paintings of Channing Peake

In December of 2012 Anne and Walon Green generously gifted a collection of ten modernist Channing Peake paintings to the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission. Through the years, the Greens enjoyed living with the many works of Channing Peake they collected and then at one point in their lives, they decided that they would share some of their cherished paintings with the public rather than put them away in storage. In a recent interview with Brett Leigh-Dicks in the Santa Barbara News-Press, Mr. Green said “…we felt the County would be a good place for the works because lots of people will get to enjoy them.” The County Arts Commission invites the public from 3-5pm for an art reception at the new Betteravia Gallery South at the Joseph Centeno Government Building at 511 E. Lakeside Pkwy., Santa Maria.

Before this large bequest, the County owned only one large Channing Peake painting, currently on view in the 4th fl. Board of Supervisors Hearing Room in Santa Barbara; and the popular Fiesta mural currently on long-term loan to the City of Santa Barbara Airport Terminal. The gift of the Green Collection to the County is an incredible addition, highlighting an important part of Santa Barbara’s cultural history. In the downtown Santa Barbara Public Library, the public can also visit the large “Don Quixote” mural collaboratively painted by Peake and Howard Warshaw.

Channing Peake, a Santa Barbara and Santa Ynez Valley artist and resident rancher on Rancho Jabali, not only captured images of ranching, the figure, and landscape but interpreted them with a modernist sensibility. His early wanderlust through Mexico and Europe and his friendships with gifted artists like Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo and Rico Lebrun served him well— expanding his mastery as a draftsman and colorist. Never wishing to be trapped in one area of painting, he tried everything. His skill and the deepening spirituality in his work allowed him to expand his artistic vision and touch all of us with the humanity in his work.

In addition to his life as an artist and rancher, Peake was one of the founding members of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and a member of the County Arts Commission. After his passing, the Arts Commission arranged to have the exhibition space in the County Administration Building in Santa Barbara, The Channing Peake Gallery, named in his honor. After the Betteravia Gallery South exhibition of the Anne and Walon Green Collection, the collection will travel, in October 2013, to the Channing Peake Gallery in the Santa Barbara for three months. Much of this modernist work of Channing Peake will be a revelation to many who may only be familiar with his ranch life drawings and figurative paintings. Rita Ferri, Curator of Collections for the County of Santa Barbara said, “His accomplishments should not be underestimated. In a region known historically mainly for landscape painters, Channing Peake was a modernist force that reshaped art history single-handedly, right here in Santa Barbara.”

Concurrently, at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara, the Peake/Picasso exhibition opens to the public on July 12, 2013; for further information contact www.museum.ucsb.edu/