Tuesday Evening, April 8th, 2025 at 7:30 pm

Karen Leoni / Oil

About the Artist:

Karen often paints en plein air in an effort to capture the essence of the landscape. Usually these plein air sessions are accomplished close to home in Northern California but she also enjoys traveling and recently spent a month painting in Italy. Exploring new places, whether at home or abroad, is a constant source of inspiration for her.

Karen moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from Atlanta, Georgia in 1989. She was immediately struck the by the natural beauty that enveloped her and was inspired to return to drawing and painting from the world of photography. She states: “I feel very fortunate to live in California surrounded by the magnificent landscape with its endless variety. Painting allows me to closely examine nature and I now notice everyday things that otherwise would have passed me by. Time slows down when you paint or sketch. It’s magical.”

She works in both the oil and pastel mediums and believes that one enhances the other. Currently she is primarily focusing on the figure and animals in the landscape and prepares by painting small studies outdoors in the plein air style. She believes that these studies improve the larger, finished pieces by enabling her to capture and recreate more accurate color and atmosphere. It also develops her “artist memory” when racing the clock and observing the rapid changes in light that only occur when painting plein air.

Her works are in galleries in California and New York as well as corporate and private collections across the U.S. and Italy. In addition, she has received numerous awards in various juried events, plein air competitions and exhibits.

Affiliations:

Oil Painters of America
California Plein Air Painters Signature Member
California Art Club
American Impressionist Society

Tuesday Evening, May 13th, 2025 at 7:30 pm

Steven Mc Donald / Landscape

About the Artist:

About Steven:

“My inspiration comes from the sublime and dynamic beauty of nature. I try to capture the sense of times and places in my paintings, not by mimicking what I see but by exploring the innate qualities that define a scene. I let the process of feeling and recognizing what is happening off and on the canvas lead me. Perhaps the painting will tell me it needs a stroke of violet, or an edge to be blurred. I want my lights to glow and my shadows to fade. It is attending to these things that keeps my work alive and expressive.” – Steven McDonald

A native to the California Bay Area, Steven has known his passion is for art ever since he was 9 years old. He took his first art classes after school at the local community center, and began his first serious oil painting instruction in high school with master painters Brigitte Curt and Jim Smyth. He graduated from Cornell University with a BS in computer science in 2019, after which he spent a year studying art with the Lorenzo de Medici Institute and Chiaroscuro Studio in Florence, Italy.

Steven prefers painting plein air and all prima for its intimacy and its truthfulness to nature, and is inspired by the techniques of master artists such as John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla, and Edgar Payne.

Now 26, Steven is a rising star in the California Plein Air community. He has been recognized by organizations including the American Impressionist Society, Plein Air Magazine, and the Triton Museum of Art. In 2019 he was named one of Southwest Art Magazine’s 21 Under 31 Artists to Watch. Steven continues to paint or draw every day and looks forward to the many years of art to come.

Tuesday Evening, March 11th, 2025 at 7:30 pm

Dave Wagner - Oil

Bio:

“My educational path has led me to study at Cal Poly, The California College of the Arts, and the New York Academy of Art. I’ve been interested in art my entire life. Now I teach at Las Positas College, in Livermore. When I’m not teaching or in the studio, I’m generally exploring the outdoors of Northern California.”

Oil Paintings:

“My newest work is an extension of my relationship with the natural world, which I love to explore. The people, scenery, and events occurring while searching for a new mountain, basin, lake, or valley are never-ending fuel for my paintings. In contrast to previous work which described the sublime, new paintings focus on the pastoral. I’m interested in communicating the energy of the moment, the feeling of that time and place, and the truth beyond a physical reality.”

Formations:

“I am interested in the dualities I see shaping the grand dance of the universe: tragedy and beauty, chaos and order, destruction and creation. The paintings I make are enigmatic meditations on impermanence and the sublime. My work is heavily influenced by my love of spending time surrounded by mountains, staring at the stars, and considering the epic of what has come before and the potential for the future.

The notion of impermanence, championed by Buddhists, is also a theme in this work. In comparison to rocks or mountains, our time here on Earth is minute; yet everything is in a state of change, including geology. In our lifetimes a mountain, or boulder, or rock, or star may not appear to be changing at all. But everything is in a state of flux, being altered by the stresses and influences of what is near and the physics of our reality.”
Dave Wagner