Nancy Stein Artist Exhibition & Reception
- April 30 - May 31
- 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
- The Sea Ranch Lodge
Exhibition Dates: Thursday, 04.30 – Friday, 05.31
Opening Meet & Greet: Thursday, 04.30 from 4pm-6pm
Closing Reception: Saturday, 05.30 from 4pm-6pm
Voice of the Northern California Coast
Nancy Stein’s paintings are a study of fifty years of daily wanderings on the Northern California coast, renown for its persistent gray fog. Her paintings seek to honor the voice of this land and sea and sky in unsentimental terms.
The Northern Californian seas are as unpredictable as the weather, often ferocious, fueled by fierce winds racing across thousands of miles of the Pacific, gathering force and wildness. Nancy’s work invites us to see movement, silence and drama. The colors are challenging to match - not just blue but some mix of viridian and Payne’s gray….muted, hidden, flashing with light from within yet shadowed with mystery. The seas turn peaceful as autumn brings warmth, and long shadows light the golden grasses.
The trees here are shape shifters. Nancy has lived many of her days among their ghostly, dripping silhouettes, abundant with the water of life. In winter, swollen velvet mosses on the trees' flanks flower with mushroom-shaped red lichens. Autumn trees are golden with sunset light. It is a soulful landscape, full of illusion and secrets, a wild magic.
The history of the years of harvest from these lands is harsh. Sea Ranch models a new respect, a living with rather than taking from the land. Made tangible by the sea’s breath on our skin and lungs, the beauty of this place invites us to acknowledge our human impact. We are witness to loss; the beauty around us inspires us to recognize our proper place and power, to appreciate nature’s right to exist and its own power to heal.
Nancy Stein was born in Portland, Oregon. She studied art at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg, France. Nancy earned an MFA in Printmaking at San Francisco State University, 1985, and an BFA from CCAC in Oakland. She has lived and worked in Point Reyes, California for 51 years, where she built her home in the Douglas fir forest. Working many years in chalk pastel, Nancy began a series on ocean waves. The series is now at Wave #105. Her artwork is featured in private collections world wide.