Featured artist of the month 2014

Sas Colby

Painter Sas Colby’s vivid colors and floral shapes dance with each other in space- recalling Matisse, with a California palette. Energetic yet thoughtful, these richly painted works celebrate the sensory experience of painting from nature.

Colby attended Rhode Island School of Design and has been making, exhibiting, and teaching art for 50 years. Residencies at Djerassi, Villa Montalvo and the Ucross Foundation provided time for valuable concentration on experimental mixed media works such as artist’s books.

Colby has recently had two solo exhibitions at Oakopolis Gallery in Oakland, has been a visiting artist in universities in the US and abroad, and teaches at artist retreats in New Mexico and in Mallorca, Spain.

Artist Statement

"My recent paintings are inspired by the exuberance of color  and play of light in my Berkeley garden. The palette is hyper intense and the paintings are surprisingly bold. Perhaps this is a reaction to an earlier series of very sober ink drawings of body bags and meditations on the state of world affairs.

I’m now intensely engaged in the old fashioned tradition of creating pictures for visual pleasure, spending hours in my garden studio, stepping out to hear the bees, smell the roses, and discern the shape of a leaf. In this way the life of the plants infuses the paintings. Each one challenges my previously held notions of space and leads me to the next discovery."

Click here to visit the artist’s website.