LPAPA announces winners in their annual Dusk to Dawn show
By MARRIE STONE
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Sunset is the saddest light there is. We rode a long time in the glow of it, everything silent except for the crickets and the frogs who were revving up for twilight. I stared through the windshield as the burned lights took over the sky. –Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
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Courtesy of LPAPA
Danny Folkman’s “Swirling Sky” took first place in LPAPA’s “Dusk to Dawn” show
What is it about that shadowy time of day? The hope of daybreak. The relief of nightfall. There’s a reason so many artists are drawn to dusk and dawn. The light looks divine. But there’s also that mood that a low sun evokes. Dawn holds promise. Dusk holds everything else. Sundown can elicit romance or melancholy. Twilight casts an evocative backdrop onto which we can project our many emotions. It’s a moody canvas that draws us in and makes those nocturne scenes so universally relatable. Watching the sun drop into the ocean feels different than shading our eyes from its glare at high noon.
This is what makes the Laguna Plein Air Painter Association’s (LPAPA) annual Dusk to Dawn show a favorite amongst artists and viewers alike. It’s impossible to emerge unmoved.
“My favorite time of day is twilight, just as the sun sets but there’s still some visibility,” said Awards Judge Jeff Sewell, who is both a LPAPA Signature Artist and board member. “It’s a very temperamental, sensitive and harmonizing light that’s being attempted. That’s why it fascinates me. I love to paint at those times of day and was thrilled to judge this show.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Denise Busony’s “The Long Goodbye”
Dusk to Dawn attracted 148 entries by 69 artists. Thirty-one paintings were juried as finalists and are on display at the LPAPA Gallery through September 1. That show includes 12 paintings from Southern California, as well as paintings from Arizona, Colorado, Illinois and Utah. Twenty-nine additional paintings juried in as semi-finalists and are on display at City Hall (which includes 20 Southern California paintings, as well as one painting each from Connecticut and Colorado).
Dusk and dawn scenes are some of the most difficult to paint. The light is tricky and moves quickly. “Mastering the ‘nocturn’ color values is quite a challenge and not one that many artists feel they can conquer,” said juror and LPAPA Executive Director Bonnie Langner. “From a collector’s perspective, however, the result is breathtaking and resonates with most everyone.”
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Photo by Jeff Rovner
Philippe Gandiol’s “Night Cap”
What stood out to Langner this year was the number of urban sunset scenes. “These are especially difficult due to the lines and capture of lights on structures and the street.”
Impressed with the quality of the paintings this year, Langner added, “Their success at rendering these moody and tricky paintings speaks to the development of our artists.”
That made Sewell’s job as judge particularly difficult. In his mind, there were easily eight paintings that could have taken first place. “It was much harder to narrow it down from those eight to the final four because I felt they were so different yet so close to one another in quality and execution and achievement.”
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Interestingly, the three winners approached the challenge in wholly unique ways. “Mulholland Drive is one of my favorite places in the city not only to paint, but just to go for a drive,” said first-place winner Danny Folkman. “It’s my go-to place whenever I find myself caught up in the grind for a little too long. It’s good to get out under some wide-open sky and remind yourself where you are from time to time.”
Inspired by both the L.A.-based films La La Land and the 2011 Ryan Gosling film Drive, Folkman said movies often impact his subject matter. “I love the blend of neo-noir aspects of Drive with the timeless, dreamy quality of L.A. that La La Land captures so beautifully,” he said. “The colors on my palette actually developed from trying to paint nocturnes that looked the way L.A. looks in La La Land.”
For Sewell, Swirling Sky hit all the right notes. “That minimized lighting gave him the opportunity to impact the scene with other nuances like the headlights and the far distant cityscape lights that complemented the whole painting.”
For second-place winner Nancie King Mertz, whose painting Hollywood Haze also focused on a cityscape, it was perspective that drew her into the scene. “My focus – whether teaching, plein air painting or in the studio – is typically on perspective,” she said. “I’m always drawn to light and shadow and yet it’s perspective that truly pulls me.”
“I really loved the overall painting of Los Angeles on a golden evening, or possibly early morning, turning into a hazy burnoff,” said Sewell.
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Courtesy of LPAPA
Nancie King Mertz’s “Hollywood Haze”
The biggest surprise from a compositional standpoint was third-place winner Renae Wang’s Pacific Hotel (II).
“The scene depicted is imaginary, and I had no photo references of any real oceanfront motel pool that looks exactly like this,” Wang said. “However, it was inspired by many nameless beachfront hotels perched on the edge of Highway 1 that I’ve seen before, and the many drives I’ve done up and down the Pacific Coast. In a sense, this feels like the quintessential Californian image to me. I included the TV light from the window to imply the presence of a figure without literally painting it, hoping it could add a layer of narrative to the landscape.”
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Courtesy of LPAPA
Renae Wang’s “Pacific Hotel (II)”
Wang paints many nocturne scenes that depict mundane public places like gas stations, hotels and freeways. “It’s encouraging to see paintings like mine, which try to capture the overlooked beauty in mundane places, have a place in a great institution like LPAPA.”
“That painting intrigued me so much,” Sewell said. “It’s a great twilight moment with the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean. You don’t see the sun anymore, but you see its radiance in the sky. She captures the changes in gradient, going from warm to cool, and there’s a lot of interesting brush strokes. That painting is really spectacular.”
These 60 paintings will take you on an emotional ride. From Newport’s Back Bay to Catalina’s harbors, from city streets alive with night owls to the quiet solitude of a Laguna sunset. Whatever your emotion, you’ll find it expressed on canvas and preserved long after that ephemeral moment has passed.
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Courtesy of LPAPA
Chuck Kovacic’s “Nightshade” received an honorable mention
Both shows – at the LPAPA Gallery and City Hall – will be on display through September 1. The two shows are also viewable on Artsy. Online visitors can find the LPAPA Gallery show here and the City Hall show here, and all works are available for purchase.
For more information about the show or LPAPA, visit their website here.
