Nancy Burres and Barbara Harris

About Nancy Burres

Nancy Burres has been a painter almost her entire life: she remembers getting a complete oil painting kit when she was 12 years old—and she still has the wooden box it came in. She also remembers her family taking her to a local art exhibit of Robert Wood’s paintings, which only increased her commitment to drawing and to art.  At Burbank High, Burres took all the art classes available and then took college art classes through Santa Rosa Adult Education and at the Mendocino Art Center over decades.

While classes certainly help artists to “learn the basics,” Burres says that at some point an artist simply needs to keep painting, keep experimenting, until “you get it just right.”  Burres has been getting it just right for a long time, showing her work in galleries in Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties.  Her work is displayed in the Dolphin Gallery and in the Mendocino Country Store.  “I love painting with oil,” Burres says, adding that she also creates abstract images using acrylic:  she chooses the medium that best suits her subject matter.

Burres notes that she especially “loves landscapes:  when I look at a beautiful scene it gives me a sense of harmony and serenity,” which she then captures in her paintings.  Her many paintings of redwoods, sunsets, high mountain wildflowers, water scenes, and old falling-down cabins show her attachment to the natural world.  Her ultimate goal, she says, “is to create artworks of beauty and peace that nourish the viewer on a spiritual level.”

Burres’s enthusiasm for and devotion to her craft are palpable: everywhere she goes she notices scenes she would love to paint, so much so that she says she “can hardly wait to get home to begin painting.”  Go to https://nancyburres.weebly.com/abstract-paintings.html to see additional examples of Burres’s memorable paintings, and plan to join the artist for the show’s opening reception on September 1^st.

About Barbara Harris

In addition to making remarkably memorable jewelry, Barbara Harris is an illustrator, calligrapher, graphic artist, and arts administrator who currently serves as Communications Director for the Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation in Geyserville.  She also trains volunteer docents to lead tours at the famous Oliver Ranch.  In addition to her work as an administrator for a number of arts organizations, Harris taught graphic design and visual communications courses at Santa Rosa Junior College for over 25 years.

Harris describes her jewelry as “sculptural assemblages created from copper, brass, rubber, and plastic repurposed from salvage yards or found on the ground and the beach,” along with whatever strikes her imagination, such as plumbing washers, poker chips, glass fishing floats, and seed pods.  As this description suggests, Harris’s work is inspired by what she finds around her:  each piece she designs is one-of-a-kind and none are designed in advance.  Rather, the materials themselves are the “initial inspiration” that leads to even more inspiration as she works her way through construction.

The earrings and necklaces that Harris creates are thus unique; they won’t be duplicated or replicated since, as she says, “most materials will never be found again.”  She sees her constructions as “spontaneous gifts” that surprise and delight as she constructs them.

You can request images of Barbara Harris’s jewelry from her portfolio by contacting her at baharris@sonic.net and see a number of pieces for yourself at the Dolphin Gallery throughout September.