Hospice of Santa Barbara Art Exhibition to Showcase Original Oil Paintings

Hospice of Santa Barbara welcomes local artist Tana Sommer, who will display her oil paintings in the Leigh Block Gallery located within Hospice of Santa Barbara. On Wednesday, February 12 from 5:30 to 7 p.m., Hospice of Santa Barbara will host a wine and cheese open house reception for the new exhibit.

Sommer has been painting since she was 15 years old. Color is her main focus. Today, Sommer divides her painting year between Santa Barbara and Condeau, in the lower Normandy region of France. Her work is in many private collections in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, New York, Washington D.C., Denmark, Holland and Paris.

Sommer is a California native. Her studies took her to the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 where she learned photography, and to the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland where she studied the various techniques of painting and drawing. In 1974, she started etching at the Atelier Buri in Amsterdam. During the following years her etchings were shown in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Paris, Aix-en-Provence and California. Between 1979 and 1988 her studio was in France in Forcalquier, Alpes de Haute Provence, where she printed her own color photos and continued etching and watercolor painting. When she returned to California in 1989, with her French husband and their daughter, she returned to oil, painting seascapes and California coastal landscapes.

Sommer will donate 25 percent of the proceeds from her art sales to Hospice of Santa Barbara, Inc. Guests can enjoy wine, refreshments, cheese and the music of classical guitarist Theresa Ogella-Lopez at the open house reception. Sommer’s exhibition will be on display at the Leigh Block Gallery at Hospice of Santa Barbara through April 2014.

Hospice of Santa Barbara “volunteers” its free professional counseling and care management services to more than 700 children and adults every month who are experiencing the impact of a life-threatening illness, or grieving the death of a loved one. Hospice of Santa Barbara is also present on 11 local middle and high school campuses to work with children and teens who are grieving the loss of a loved one. For more information about Hospice of Santa Barbara, including volunteer opportunities, call (805) 563-8820 or visit www.hospiceofsantabarbara.org.