Ventura County Arts Council — Call to Artists deadline is Jan. 25

First Place

Alice’s Walk on the Avenue

Richard Peterson

digital art, iPad painting, 12 x 16 inches

$150

This visually versatile and skillful artist has an eye for current events, both close and far away, and for things we usually see just in passing; his dog over a graffitied drain cover, an iPhone screen, or a border crossing scene. Things that barely need a second look, but rather are asking us to, not just ‘stop and smell the flowers’, but to stop anytime and notice what’s around us.

Biography: Richard Peterson taught lithography, drawing and digital drawing at Ventura College for 16 years, 1982-1998. In 1998 he received a full time professorship at College of Sequoias in Visalia, CA. and retired in 2018. He moved back to his home & art studio on the Avenue which he’s owned since 1987. November 15, 2015 he saw an Apple commercial on TV introducing the new iPad. He ordered one that very instant and he’s been drawing on it ever since. He draws all day long on his iPad, watching or listening to MSNBC. He has a lithography studio with 2 presses and 30 stones. He gives litho workshops there from time to time.

His subject matter is all over the place but he’s concentrated on drawing the Avenue and his bullterrier Alice. He uses a process for which he is a patent holder to transfer iPad drawings onto a stone and print them with the four process colors. “I use the same knowledge and skills that I have learned over the years with traditional art making mediums. Drawing or painting on an iPad allows me to paint as fast I can think, unlike traditional painting, which slows me down mixing colors, changing the colors and reworking the canvas. I love my iPad.”

Second Place

Octopus’ Garden

Richard Mortensen

fused glass, 2 inches x 14-inch diameter

$250

This fused glass work, charms us by its playful nature. It is the Pippi Longstocking version of a traditional plate or bowl, and has a deceivingly casual look. The sculptors amongst us will know however, that is no small feat to achieve.

Biography: The amazing interaction between light and glass is what first attracted me to this medium over 30 years ago. For the past 20 years I have been working in fusing, the “art” of taking glass to an almost liquid state and then slowly cooling to fuse the pieces together. With fusing I find greater flexibility in what I can do as well as create more interesting color and pattern combinations. In spite of the associated cuts and burns, I get a great deal of satisfaction in working with glass and many of my pieces have been influenced by my travels throughout the American Southwest and Latin America. My “studio” is in my garage where I keep a good supply of sheet glass and band aids.

My work has been shown in galleries, wineries, tasting rooms and numerous festivals and art shows in Northern and Central California (the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art; the Bedfdord Gallery in Walnut Creek; Indigo Gallery in Santa Barbara; C- Gallery in Los Alamos; the Petaluma Gallery in Petalulma; the Gallery at the Network in San Luis Obispo; the Park Street Gallery in Paso Robles; Studios on the Park in Paso Robles, Ortman Family Vineyards and Asuncion Ridge Tasting Rooms in Paso Robles; Morro Bay Art Center; Festival of the Arts, Paso Robles). Current work can be viewed on my web site, moricaglassworks.com

Third Place

Conversation With Grandfather; Part III

Diana Daiva

mixed media, 28 x 22 inches

$1,000

Judges comment: This artist has presented us with both a verbal and visual jigsaw puzzle, and asks us to be detectives in fitting the pieces together in a meaningful way. The poem at the foot of the puzzle, makes us realize that although our task is impossible, someone is yearning to have answers.

Honorable Mention

Nest

Vajra

acrylic and ash on paper mounted to cradled board, 18 x 24 inches

$4,444.44

This artist has undeniable skill and just as important, – patience, to achieve these psychedelic works. Most are scenes to be observed, but this one invites us in with an inviting smile, perhaps letting us know, that day to day enlightenment is not just found on a mountaintop, but in having a warm sense of humor.

Biography: Vajra is a self-taught visionary artist, magician, philosopher and freelance contractor for consciousness.

He has been making art his entire life and in 2008 moved to Ventura and started painting visionary works as a way to share what he feels matters most with the world. In 2017, his home and studio burned in the Thomas fire along with a majority of his original art, but he took this as an opportunity to recreate what was, but better than before, mixing the ash of his former home with the paint he used to bring certain relevant paintings back to life.

His work draws influence from across cultures, space and time – a synthesis of art and magic, science and spirituality, light and dark through a lense of nonduality always with bodhisattvic intention – that it be for the betterment of all.

“Vajra” in Sanskrit means “thunderbolt.” It is this flash of illumination he strives to bring through his paintings, shining light into the cave. Another translation is the “diamond scepter” – a thing of purity and perfection – that which can cut through anything but cannot itself be cut. His hope intention is that his paintings serve this purpose as well, piercing through the veils that the viewer may connect with what matters most.

Recurrent themes in his art include the union of polarity, the realization of the responsibility we hold for ourselves, the earth and all creatures with whom we share it, the fact that everything is connected, interrelated and interdependent as well as the cultivation love and compassion.

Over the last decade, he has painted live at countless events around the world, always appreciating the opportunity for the direct transmission of the message behind his paintings, his insight and guiding philosophy in person, but invites you to explore the message and meaning through his gallery where he shares not only the paintings but their stories at his website altaroftheheart.com

Honorable Mention

Cracking the Code

Leslie Ossentjuk

oil, 11 x 14 inches

Not for Sale

There are a million million moments in a day, and the snapshot moment chosen here is a good one. We have both ‘been there’, and most likely we have seen this moment in others too. One would think that we would all focus on the tip of the pen for the content of this painting, but we really focus on the child’s eyes, and through their eyes we join them in that same vortex of intensity.

Biography: Leslie Ossentjuk is a representational artist based in Ventura County, California. The daughter of an architect and an art professor, she was fostered in an environment rich in culture and creativity. She was educated in Claremont, California, which was an important post-war art community in the years before and during her childhood. Ms. Ossentjuk earned her B.A. in Studio Art from Scripps College in 1985. Although her background includes various three-dimensional disciplines, such as jewelry design and sculpture, her recent artwork is focused on still life and portraits utilizing colored pencil and oil paint.

Honorable Mention

Return to Dust

Marlene Struss

acrylic on panel, 40 x 48 inches

$3,400

In this painting we seem to enter into a maelstrom of paint, like being thrown around in an unexpected wave, but as we try to make sense of our orientation, we find we are held in just enough safety, that we can experience it in what Joseph Campbell called aesthetic arrest. A quiet place from which to encounter the world without judgement.

Biography: Marlene Struss grew up in California dreaming of being an artist since she can remember. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Santa Barbara in 1973, working with such esteemed instructors as Irma Cavat, Howard Warshaw, and Larry Rivers. Over the course of time Struss has created bodies of work with media including printmaking, surrealistic montage, realistic pastel, painterly collage, digital paintings, and at the present time abstract acrylic paintings on panel. Because she strives to succeed without succumbing to artistic trends and dictates, Struss has developed a highly individualistic style of painting that can be described as biomorphic abstract expressionism.

Struss has made steady progress in her career by exhibiting broadly throughout the United States, some foreign countries, and online and being involved in the arts community in Santa Barbara, California.

Among the awards she has received are the Individual Artist Award in Assemblage from the Arts Fund of Santa Barbara in 2004 and the Best in Show Award at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art in its Tri-County Juried Exhibition in 2019. Presently she is represented by 10 West Gallery and the Corridan Gallery and is a member of the Abstract Art Collective in Santa Barbara. She is also represented by Marina Kieser, art consultant catering to the movie and television industry, in North Hollywood. Struss’s work can be seen in many television productions, including Man with a Plan, The Big Bang Theory, Mom, Lucifer, NCIS LA, By the Book, New Girl, The Better Half, Grey’s Anatomy, Ballers, and more. Her artwork has appeared in several publications, including Studio Visit, Vol. Two; National Association of Women Artists, Inc. 122nd Annual Exhibition; and Kennedy Publishing Company’s Best Of California, V