Tag: fine art

Renaissance portraits bring poetry to the Timken!

A new exhibition has opened at the Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park. It’s titled Poetic Portraits: Allegory and Identity in 16th Century Europe. Read all about it here.

Visitors to the museum have the opportunity to see the work of notable Renaissance artists, including Sofonisba Anguissola, whose painting  Portrait of Giovanni Battista Caselli, on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, is being displayed in the United States for the first time.

Lovers of fine art and art history will certainly enjoy this exhibition. They’ll also treasure the excellent booklet concerning the artists that is freely handed out at the front desk. It explains how both allegory (symbolism) and identity (descriptive details) combine in the painting of these portraits. This results in a poetic blending of abstract ideals and visual reality.

To most of us here in the 21st century, the people in the portraits are complete strangers. (A few aren’t even positively identified by experts.) But one can see how, compared to flatter, blander pre-Renaissance art, these portraits have assumed a more definite personality.

Gazing at each portrait, I found myself wondering: what had the subject’s true personality been like? The eyes and facial expressions might provide a hint.

The world-class Timken Museum of Art is always free to the public. The exhibition continues through March 29, 2026.

Check out the museum’s website for everything you need to know here.

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Painting fine art umbrellas in Balboa Park!

Imagine owning a table umbrella that’s also a work of fine art!

No need to imagine. Look for Studio 26 in Balboa Park’s amazing Spanish Village Art Center. That’s where you’ll find Edward Juarez, the friendly artist who you see in these photographs!

He was painting away when I walked through Spanish Village yesterday. I asked him about the umbrella. When finished, it will have multiple coatings and will be absolutely waterproof. The finished carousel umbrella on the patio nearby has been outdoors for a good while and still looks great.

It was incredible how the cowboy image he was painting came to life and acquired depth as he continued to apply color. This umbrella will be as vibrant as an oil painted framed canvas! He kindly took me into his studio and showed me other Western paintings perfect for this umbrella.

It would be super cool to own one of these table umbrellas, don’t you think? Good news! Edward told me he does commissions! Step into his studio and you’ll notice he paints every kind of subject matter.

Here’s his website.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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A surprising art gallery in Oceanside!

There’s an art gallery in Oceanside that you might not know. I stumbled upon it by sheer coincidence the other day.

This surprising art gallery is located inside the historic Sunshine Brooks Theater building, the home of the Oceanside Theatre Company. Very fine works by regional artists hang in the lobby and down a hallway.

The current exhibition of the Brooks Theater Gallery is Black Perspectives 2. The exhibition’s inspiration was the arrival of Juneteenth. This theatre webpage explains that the gallery features previous exhibitors and new POC artists sharing their vision of Black history, culture, family and community.

Incidentally, these fine art pieces are for sale. You can support the artists!

The exhibitions in the gallery change fairly often. Next time you pass by the Sunshine Brooks Theater in downtown Oceanside, why not step through the door as I did and take a peek. You might be surprised!

A few more examples in the gallery…

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Summer Solstice Exhibit showcases artists at Liberty Station.

Some fine art can be enjoyed by those visiting Liberty Station in Point Loma. Eight artists who work out of studios at Liberty Station are exhibiting canvases that celebrate San Diego and our local fishing industry.

Most of the displayed pieces can be purchased. They’re all quite good, too.

The Summer Solstice Exhibit can be found in the lobby of the Dick Laub NTC Command Center building and runs May to July 2025.

While you’re at Liberty Station, just roam around. There’s so much to see and do!

(While wandering about today, I discovered a little-seen mosaic from Liberty Station’s history as Naval Training Center San Diego. I’ll blog about that next!)

A few more pieces in the Summer Solstice Exhibit…

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Pets in fine art at San Diego County Fair!

A popular attraction at the San Diego County Fair is the Exhibition of Fine Art on the first floor of Grandstand East. The fair’s theme in 2025 is our love for pets, so it isn’t surprising many of the fine art entries depict beloved animals.

The exhibition is extensive and broken up into many categories based on media and subject matter. Artists who’ve submitted their work, hoping for a blue ribbon, are from many walks of life all around San Diego County. When I checked out the exhibition, I couldn’t help noticing pets were a common subject, and not just dogs and cats. I saw rabbits, parrots and other critters!

There are pet portraits, pets painted humorously, pet abstracts! If you have a pet or simply love animals, the art will definitely put a smile on your face.

I photographed random examples that I really like…

Look who I met as I left the fine art exhibit. Woof and Meow!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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A visit to the Heritage of the Americas Museum.

There’s a surprising museum jam-packed with wonders that everyone in San Diego should visit. I’m speaking of the Heritage of the Americas Museum in Rancho San Diego.

The Heritage of the Americas Museum is located near the West entrance of Cuyamaca College, immediately adjacent to the Water Conservation Garden. The museum building appears modest at first glance, but when you step through the front door your eyes might pop out of your head!

How do I begin to describe this amazing place?

The museum has four wings. They are dedicated to Archaeology, Anthropology, Natural History and Fine Art. If you wanted to examine every artifact, specimen and work of art, you could easily spend an hour exploring the museum.

Display cases contain objects from the Americas that fall into dozens of categories, whether it might be Peruvian textiles, or Haida and Tlingit artifacts, or paleo points dated 12000 B.C. to 6000 B.C., or millions-year-old fossils, or beautiful sea shells and coral…

When I visited, school children on a field trip were excitedly peering into the displays, seeing new worlds beyond their own life experience.

I’ll share a few photos so you get an idea of the fascinating worlds you’ll encounter, too.

Cool thing: the Heritage of the Americas Museum is free to the public every second Friday of the month!

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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The Drawing Show exhibits work of local artists!

An exhibition in the Judith Harris Art Gallery on the 9th floor of San Diego’s Central Library deserves citywide attention.

The Drawing Show, which includes work by notable local artists, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. The recurring exhibition has included the work of 82 artists over the years!

For 2025, the artists are Celeste Byers, Hugo Crosthwaite, Steve Gibson, Amanda Kazemi, Neil Kendricks, Joshua Moreno, Annalise Neil, David Peña, Melanie Taylor and Eden de la Vara. Followers of Cool San Diego Sights might recognize the names of certain artists who’ve painted murals around town.

The dozens of works on display in the library’s art gallery are very fine. Many of the drawings are meticulously detailed. One can see how they flow from each artist’s personal experiences in life. Emotions stirred by the art can be strong, and every piece made me look closely.

If you’ve never been to an art exhibition at San Diego’s Central Library, this would be a great one to check out. You won’t be disappointed.

The Drawing Show has been extended, and will now close on June 15, 2025, so you still have a few weeks.

For the gallery’s hours, click here.

A handful of examples…

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Two eras: Contrasted paintings at Timken Museum.

The Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park has opened a fascinating exhibition titled Reconsidering Bierstadt: Kent Monkman. Visitors to the fine art museum are encouraged to compare two similar but very different works: Albert Bierstadt‘s 1864 painting Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall, and First Nation Cree artist Kent Monkman‘s 2012 work The Fourth World.

The photograph above shows Kent Monkman’s painting (on loan from the Denver Art Museum) which reimagines the Bierstadt piece in the light of a different perspective.

Bierstadt’s oil painting conveys a sense of rustic tranquility and natural beauty; the somewhat shocking bottom portion of Monkman’s bolder, brighter acrylic piece shows bison being frightened and funneled in Yosemite through sheer steel walls by white men with guns.

Monkman’s contemporary painting clearly expresses that an environment can be forcibly altered by the actions of humans. Like any good art, the image ignites complex thought.

I’m no expert when it comes to the history of Yosemite. Doing some online research, I was surprised to learn that, according to a National Park Service Facebook post: Here in Yosemite, though, bison have never roamed.

Here’s the bottom portion of The Fourth World:

The next photograph is of Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall. It’s darker, vaguer, somehow more sublime. (The docent thought perhaps the painting needs to be cleaned.)

This Smithsonian website has a better photograph and explains: Bierstadt was inspired to paint Yosemite after seeing Carleton Watkins’s photographs in a New York gallery in 1862…In 1864, the year Bierstadt painted this view, President Abraham Lincoln set aside Yosemite as a protected reserve…

Head down to the Timken Museum of Art when they’re open and observe both canvases up close. When I visited, a friendly docent was standing by to answer questions and provide more insight.

The Timken, which contains many painted masterpieces, is always free! The exhibition will continue through June 8th, 2025.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Stories that connect us in Oceanside.

Currently running at the Oceanside Museum of Art is an exhibition titled The Stories that Connect Us: Selections from the OMA Collection.

Each work by 35 Southern California artists is like a unique story that invites you to think, interpret, dream–and thereby become part of the same story. Your inclusion in each artwork’s story might be untold, but it is real.

The museum’s collection contains diverse pieces in different styles, some by highly renowned artists such as John Baldessari and James Hubbell.

I was surprised to learn the Baldessari piece in the exhibit was painted circa 1959, before the artist burned “all” of his work. His Wikipedia page explains: In 1970, Baldessari and five friends[8] burnt all of the paintings he had created between 1953 and 1966 as part of a new piece, titled The Cremation Project. The ashes from these paintings were baked into cookies… This painting survived.

Here are a few photos. If you’d like to become an integral part of these stories, visit the Oceanside Museum of Art by August 31, 2025.

(Forest), John Baldessari, circa 1959. Oil and mixed media on canvas.
Star Stalker, Walter Wojtyla, 1996. Acrylic on canvas.
Influx, Toni Williams, 2023. Oil on canvas.
Untitled (Two Figures with Purple/Pink/Orange Skies), Janet Cooling, 1980s. Oil on canvas.

The following James Hubbell watercolor includes a poem that he wrote in 2004. To read it, visit the museum!

The exhibition also includes two small, typically beautiful Hubbell sculptures.

In the Beginning, James Hubbell, circa 2007. Watercolor.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

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Dreams, sleep apnea, and the art of Mary Jhun.

The current exhibitions at the Oceanside Museum of Art include Mary Jhun: In Losing Sleep, I Painted. The surreal work of Mary Jhun, who works out of Escondido, is presented in one of the museum’s upstairs galleries.

I wanted to see this exhibition because I’ve photographed several of her beautiful murals around San Diego in the past. If you’re curious, here’s one in San Ysidro, here’s another in City Heights, and here’s one more in North Park. (Sadly, I believe the one in San Ysidro was later removed.)

I didn’t know until now that Mary Jhun suffers from sleep apnea and must use an uncomfortable CPAP machine to help her breathe at night while sleeping. The Oceanside Museum of Art exhibition explores how it affects her life, creativity, and very importantly, her dreaming.

You can see her dreams in her artwork. Her pieces typically depict female faces and figures, which she calls The Girls. The Girls are elaborately drawn complex creations, filled with organic life, often entwined with machinery and strange architectural forms.

As the exhibition webpage explains: Jhun’s goal is to allow the viewer to feel understood, to question what they see, and to understand reality through a deeper lens, outside of the norm and into a place beyond realism. Her imagery of “The Girls” represents an inner self, one that is culminated in many alternate versions of what is or can be.

I love artwork that makes you stand a long while, gazing, thinking, feeling and wondering. Mary Jhun’s fine art certainly does that.

The exhibition continues through June 15, 2025.

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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Feel free to share!