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Irena Kononova is a Russian born artist who currently resides in San Mateo County and works in her studio at Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco. Daniel McCormick is a sculptor as well as a painter, working in Marin County; and Michael S. Moore, who resides and works in Benicia, also spends much of his time painting at his desert studio near Gerlach, Nevada. The three artists are distinguished by their uncommon abilities to evoke human connection, or mood, from a landscape that is alluring and often enthrallingly lovely, but that is ultimately vast and uncaring, drawing the viewer into unfamiliar territory.

Additional comments from the curator, Kathryn Weller Renfrow:

There are certain painters of the landscape whose work is not adequately described as Landscape Painting - a term that brings to mind the familiar, the comforting and the picturesque. The work of these three artists is not comforting - beautiful, yes, but it also evokes disquiet, unease, uncertainty: feelings of loss, loneliness, yearning, even fear. These sensations seem paradoxical when one is looking at lovely pictures that stir feelings of pleasure. But the paintings compel one to look longer, to find the source of disquiet. Horizons are veiled; the light is raking and bleached, or crepuscular; water is heaving, strangely colored; the perspective extreme or contradictory. Answering the question "Where was this painted?" does not satisfy: we realize that we are looking at something other than depiction of place. The land is fraught with mystery: we are lured into atmospheres imbued with obsessions, desires, and memories. The artists have made marks that are recognizable and look familiar, yet lead us to new ground.

Irena Kononova was born in Russia, growing up in St. Petersburg where her father was an actor and author. She received her Masters degree in Russian and French literature from St. Petersburg State University before she and her parents departed for the United States as political refugees in 1981. After settling in the US, she graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she received numerous honors and prizes. Before moving to California in 1994, Kononova was commissioned by GlaxoSmithKline to create a cycle of monumental murals for their headquarters in Pennsylvania. The San Mateo Art Council honored her recently with a one-person exhibit, and she has participated in many solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad.

Her paintings "intend to provoke the viewers into contemplating the ever-widening gap between the man-made world and the eternal world of nature that we are so often unable to protect. Through the luminosity of endless unrolling spaces I try to invite viewers to travel to a realm of peace and balance." The balance here is key: there is an ominous, slightly threatening presence in the paintings that indicates that a journey to that realm of peace will be complex and not without considerable effort.

Daniel McCormick's background is in environmental design, which he studied at UC Berkeley, where he received his BA. He has created a series of watershed sculptures which have been exhibited in galleries and museums, including the Armory in Pasadena; SomArts in San Francisco; and the Headlands Center for the Arts at Fort Cronkite, Sausalito; before being installed at outdoor sites where they have become part of the watershed restoration. He has worked on environmental restoration projects throughout the United States, notably at Arroyo Seco in Pasadena, where he created large woven sculptures that have remedial qualities, functioning as erosion control devices as well as public art pieces.

McCormick's care and concern for the landscape are reflected in his paintings, which focus on the landscapes and waterways that surround his studio in Marin County, and the intertidal bays and lagoons of California's wild areas. His interest and passion is for untamed landscape as well as cultural conditions that have both embraced and altered them. Much of his work is produced plein air, on the site, capturing the emotions that the land incites.

Daniel McCormick, Delta Campers oil on board, 12" x 12"

These small, gem-like paintings, as well as several larger paintings completed in the studio, are included in the Arts Benicia exhibit. Daniel McCormick, Lake Camp oil on board, 7" x 7"

Growing up in Southern California, Michael S. Moore had opportunities to explore the surrounding Mojave Desert with his friend's father, a photographer who "used the boys as pack animals" for the considerable equipment used for large format photography. The imagery of the desert surfaced unbidden while on the East Coast doing graduate work at Yale University after having received his BFA at Stanford. The imagery took on a mythic quality for him, presaging many explorations in the practically uninhabited, unknown northern deserts east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and eventual habitation at Wall Spring Ranch near Gerlach, Nevada. Moore completes his large paintings mainly at his studio in Benicia, but travels to his desert studio at all times of the year for weeks at a time, to experience all the seasons.

"I spend a lot of time on the desert, the monochrome seeming sagebrush ocean of the northern basin, navigating playas in pickups, scrambling around in rocky canyons, staring at rabbits, birds and bugs. Silence or wind; the occasional truck on the country road. My paintings were always about this country even before I came into it almost 30 years ago. It's nice over here; the light is hard and brilliant, and there's more weather than a person might reasonably expect. I try to make work about that, about the coalescence of the image and its realization, and about the silence. Slow paintings, which bear watching."

Moore's paintings in Atmospheres include a 10 x 16 foot installation of dozens of small watercolors created on his kitchen table at Gerlach, during all the seasons in the desert playa.

Michael S. Moore, Spring to Summer, acrylic on canvas, 2 of 4 panels, 20" x 40"