Davis Perkins is a California landscape painter with an unusual background.
He has had a long career as a smokejumper, firefighter, paramedic, as well as professional artist. After serving as a paratroop sergeant (first with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, and later with the 12th Special Forces Group of the Army Reserve), Davis worked 13 summers as a smokejumper, parachuting into forest fires with the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. During the winter he attended art school, graduating from the University of Oregon with a degree in fine arts. His early work was featured in solo exhibitions at the Alaskan State Museum and the Smithsonian Institution Air & Space Museum; both museums selected his work for their permanent collections. In addition, he has a painting in the Pentagon with the United States Air Force Art Collection as well as in the collections of several other public institutions.
Davis exhibits his work in galleries and other art venues in Northern California, while continuing his life of travel and public service. In 2007 he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, and created paintings from his view at the summit. He remains active as a paramedic, and as a member of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team of the Department of Health and Human Services. Since 2010 Davis has served on medical relief missions to Haiti, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Liberia (Ebola outbreak), Vanuatu, Nepal, Lesvos, Greece to aid with the refugee crisis, and Mosul, Iraq, working with trauma patients in the current conflict.
Davis has been featured in several national magazines, including the April/May 2018 issue of the Plein Air Magazine. He is an Artist Member of the California Art Club and a Signature Member of the Oil Painters of America.
View the archived show page for Carol Peek & Davis Perkins: Painting The West, presented by the Gallery February 10—March 16, 2024.
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As a longtime admirer of Arthur Mathews and other tonalists, I responded immediately to Paul Roehl’s landscapes and palette and am thrilled to have his work in the Gallery. Paul (his last name is pronounced rail) lives in Santa Cruz, having been raised in California, primarily in the South Bay Area. Though his primary interest is in contemporary non-objective or abstract imagery, he enjoys sketching plein-air and accurately recreating the techniques and style of late 19th and early 20th century landscape painters. He also turns to earlier Barbizon school painters for inspiration, as well as American tonalist painters, citing especially the subtle and fresh visual poetry of George Inness and William Keith.
Paul is currently an adjunct professor of Art and Art History at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. In May of 2015, Paul gave a one hour lecture in the Holton Studio Gallery. A video of the lecture can be viewed on this blog post.
His painting “Sunrise, Fremont” from this show won first place at the 2015 Santa Cruz Art League’s 85th Annual State Wide Landscape Show. —Tim Holton
Paul’s work was featured in our February, 2015 show, “A Continuous Harmony: New Tonalist Paintings by Robert Flanary and Paul Roehl.” View the show’s webpage…
In October 2020, we featured Paul in the exhibition “The Poetic Landscape: New Landscapes by Paul Roehl.” View the show’s webpage here..
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Barbara Tapp graduated in Interior Design from Sydney, Australia and moved to San Francisco in the early 1980s. Barbara’s career spans 30 years as an architectural renderer and travel book illustrator.
Drawing and sketching is a key foundation in Barbara’s sensitive watercolors. Her energetic Plein Air urban and seascape paintings are finely drafted perspective driven works. Her focus is telling a story and often a title will come to mind when she selects a scene to paint. Barbara’s paintings are keen observations of life with a fine eye for detail. Barbara continues to paint daily and competes regularly throughout the year in exhibitions and Plein Air events. She is a Signature Member of California Plein Air Painters and Juried Member of Watercolor West.
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Barbara’s work was featured in our February 2018 show, Barbara Tapp: 31 Days in West Berkeley. Visit the show page here…
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Poetically capturing the vibrant spirit of the California landscape, Erik’s work reflects his strong admiration and appreciation for the Old Masters. I am very excited to have Erik Tiemens’ work in the gallery and to be able to enjoy looking at and sharing with visitors his extraordinary genius as a landscape painter.
In his latest works, Tiemens explores the theme of ruins reimagined in California, as well as the relationship between European art from the Dutch Golden Age and classical historic paintings from Rome in the 1600s. The similarities of the Roman Campagna and the Golden State’s oak-covered hillsides proves to be a fruitful area of discovery in finding a synthesis to the pictorial past.
Erik Tiemens is known internationally as a painter of fine landscapes with a classical influence. He studied traditional drawing and painting at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, graduating with distinction in 1990. He has since worked on many film and design projects, primarily as an art director for Industrial Light and Magic, creating storyboards, concept paintings and providing art direction. While working in the entertainment field he has never wavered from his passion for traditional art. Fueled by travels to European art museums and absorbing scenic cities and towns, Tiemens always sketched and painted. This serves as a library of ideas and environments for his personal and professional work. Landscape painting has always captured his imagination and he enjoys studying old masters from the 16th – 19th centuries. This deep appreciation informs his palette and choice of subject matter. Tiemens’ current focus is toward creating romantic landscapes with dramatic use of light and shadow. Now living in Sausalito, California, his work has been shown in galleries and exhibitions around the world
He is available for private commissions. Visit Erik’s website at watersketch.com.
Read an excellent interview with the artist on the website of the digital magazine Boldbrush, here…
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Born and raised in Tokyo, Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi moved to New York in 1993. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 1998, he started his career as a staff illustrator for Lucas Learning, Ltd. in San Francico. Two years later, Dice moved back to New York to work for Blue Sky Studios as a visual development/color key artist on blockbuster film projects such as Ice Age, Robots and Horton Hears a Who. In 2007, he accepted the new challenge to join Pixar Animation Studios. Dice was the color and lighting art director of Pixar’s feature Toy Story 3.
While working in animation, Dice has actively been pursuing his gallery work, which has been featured in numerous exhibitions at galleries and museums in cities such as New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Tokyo. His film “The Dam Keeper” has earned him nomination in 2015 for an Academy Award for best animated short.
Dice lives in a tiny San Francisco apartment where he shares a living room/working studio with his wife, Mei, a jewelry maker. His blog is at simplestroke.com.
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