Ronnie Weeks is best known for his very creative Assemblage Art.  He repurposes artifacts and articles that might wind up in the trash, but under his skillful eye, beauty abounds with intricate and captivating themes.

Gordon Fowler 

Gordon Fowler is a former high school quarterback and a lapsed rock-and-roll musician. As a Marine combat correspondent in Vietnam Cross of Gallantry. (The character named “Cowboy” in Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam War movie, “Full Metal Jacket,” is based on Fowler.) He built his father’s small business-Wick Fowler’s Two-Alarm chili-into a multi-million-dollar national company. He opened La Zona Rosa, the popular Austin restaurant and nightclub made semi-famous in 1995 by the #1 country hit song ‘Amy’s Back in Austin”. He’s married to the popular rhythm-and-blues musician and recording artist Marcia Ball. And though it all, for more than three decades, Gordon Fowler has been a painter. 

Galleries and Museums Exhibited
Santa Fe/ Kennebunkport/throughout Texas
Awards: West Texas Watercolor Society, Kentucky Watercolor Society, Louisiana Watercolor Society, Waterloo Watercolor Group 

Commissions:
Dillard’s Department Stores and the Austin Museum of Art Commemorative watercolor to mark the Austin Museum of Art fundraiser/mall opening. 

Montgomery Museum of Fine Art “Stonehouse Farm” oil painting for a museum fundraiser John Sharp “Placedo Hall, circa 1958” 

Today, Gordon Fowler teaches painting at the Austin Museum of Art and paints in the Southwestern U.S., in Mexico and in Europe. 

Artist Comments:
Sometimes I feel I should price my work by the mile because in making it I’ve driven literally thousands of miles crisscrossing Texas, looking for the perfect set-up, passing dozens of good spots along the way.
You don’t have to look hard to find places of great beauty here in Texas, and I get to go looking more than anyone deserves. The resulting paintings are sort of a back roads travelogue on canvas. 

I began experimenting with the palette knife about 10 years ago in an effort to capture textures that I couldn’t achieve with a brush. Now, I find that I am no longer satisfied with what I call “flat painting” so, at the most basic level, my work is an exploration of the medium of oil paint and the method of applying it to canvas with a knife. There is an element of experimentation every time I paint–to see how far I can push the medium to achieve the idea I wish to convey.

I work in many different series, most of them ongoing, and each beginning with a different concept. Inspiration comes from many sources including old walls and dilapidated buildings, signs, rocks and rusted things. I am fascinated with the accidental beauty found in debris. Subject matter varies but method and medium remain consistent. My strokes differ considerably according to the series or to the subject. I try continually to invent new strokes and new ways to work the pigment with the palette knife.

I work wet into wet, layering thicker pigment over thinner pigment. This becomes a journey with unpredictable detours and outcomes which must be resolved along the way. Once I begin, I work spontaneously and intuitively, allowing the painting itself to lead me to the next stroke. For me, painting with some degree of speed is a necessary part of the process in working wet into wet. It allows me to be able to scratch and scrape into the wet surface and allows the layers of pigment to interact in ways that can’t happen once a painting is dry. I like the final results to show the energy and emotion that are a part of the creation of that painting. The residue of accidental happenings can also contribute to keeping my work fresh, exciting, alive and full of unplanned surprises.

As a Wimberley artist her works include:

– Contemporary paintings
– Abstract paintings
– Texas contemporary abstracts
– Expressionistic landscapes
– Abstracted landscapes
– Palette knife paintings
– Oil paintings
– Southwest expressionistic paintings
– Abstract oil paintings
– Abstract paintings
– San Miguel abstract paintings
– Austin and Hill Country landscapes
– Texas landscapes


Maxine Price has been described as an

– Abstract Painter
– Austin abstract painter
– Texas expressionistic painter
– Contemporary landscape artist
– Palette knife artist
– Contemporary abstract painter
– Southwest abstract expressionist painter
– Abstract painter, Austin and the Southwest

As a sculptor in bronze, clay, limestone, metal and/or glass, Pat Moberley Moore’s sculptures are about capturing emotion in 3-D.  Of her work she says, “My vision is not political, nor do I care to look at the darker side of ourselves or our world.  I endeavor to speak to the inner life  and to the beauty of the earth and her charges. “

She has a BFA and a BS in Education from the University of Houston and has studied with such notables as Eugene Daub, Lincoln Fox, Bruno Lucchesi, and Sandy Scott.  Pat has been in many exhibitions, both juried and invitational and has received high awards. Her work is in numerous collections, including Former First Ladies Roslyn Carter, Nancy Regan, and Barbara Bush; Willie Nelson and Walter Cronkite.

About The Oakleys…
       We are just regular people who happen to be artists.
            It’s why we live in Santa Fe.
More of Gary’s work and artist statement can be seen at Vivo Contemporary Gallery (725 Canyon Road in Santa Fe; www.vivocontemporary.com)  or at Galeria Gaudi in Madrid Spain (www.galeriagaudi.net).