Seven Painters in Search of the Unseen in Santa Barbara

Rosemary Gebhart and Marcello Ricci curated this group show featuring seven women who have all arrived at highly distinctive ways of seeing the world through their art. Challenged by the premise of the exhibit to imagine reactions that are not their own to the world around them, the artists have gathered works that reflect their awareness of the passage of time and the flux of historical experience.

Lety Garcia’s remarkable urban landscapes trace what appear to be timeless moments back to their origins in specific times and places, many of which are no longer the same. It’s at once bright and ghostly, this Hopper-esque vision of our region. Maria Miller, Cynthia Martin, and Pamela Benham are united in finding beauty in abstract forms, whether it’s the finely calibrated horizontal zips that animate Martin’s work or the swirling vortices of color that inhabit Benham’s work.

Diane Giles works in an elegantly constrained palette using techniques that ally her method of constructing the human figure in space with cubism. Ruth Ellen Hoag celebrates the freedom of the moment in her abstract selections, while Holli Harmon continues on her lifelong journey to record the natural rhythms and seasonal processes of our region. Taken together, these works express an enthusiasm for the image that’s sure to provoke a second and third look.