An exibition in The Studio that ran from March 2 to April 29, 2018.
Recent paintings by Christopher Evans capture the exquisite mystery and splendor of an untouched earthly paradise. He is able to explore the psychological and spiritual places in nature that break the traditions of representational landscape. Growing up in New York and receiving an MFA from UCLA in 1980, Christopher now resides in Sonoma County where he gathers, with his paintings, the place and topography that surround him.
– Kate Eilertsen, Curator
As a painter, Christopher Leith Evans has had a multi-faceted career that has brought to him a wide range of experiences, awards and honors including travel assignments with National Geographic, working with film directors George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Martin Scorsese, an Oscar nomination for Special Visual Effects, grants from the Ford Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Academy of Art in San Francisco.
Christopher Evans’ landscape paintings of the past decade are inspired by the rolling hills, oak trees, reflecting waters, and expansive skies of Northern California’s Russian River valley where the artist lives. The pure, elemental forms seen in rocks, water, branches, leaves, sky and clouds, are the natural resources from which the work evolves. The paintings themselves have a remarkable clarity of atmosphere, a quality of light, a time of day, and specificity of place that gives one the sensation of being there, or the feeling of wanting to be there.
Kate Eilertsen, Curator
Kate has worked in the art world for many years as an arts advocate, curator and educator. She began her museum work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, moved to Boston where she opened a new museum for the Harvard University Art Museums and then to San Francisco where she was the Director of Intersection for the Arts, Museum of Craft and Folk Art and Acting Director of Visual Arts for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She has taught at the California College of Arts, San Francisco Art Institute and recently at Sonoma State University. She is currently a guest curator and art consultant in Sonoma County.