The 9th Annual Gualala Salon & Salon des Refusés at Gualala Arts

The 9th Annual Gualala Salon & Salon des Refusés opens at Gualala Arts on Friday, June 10, 2022. Presented by the North Coast Artist Guild, NCAG , this annual exhibit has earned a reputation as the top judged and juried fine art exhibit on the Mendonoma coast.

The exhibit opens Friday, June 10, and will continue through July 3, 2022 in the Burnett Gallery, Elaine Jacob Foyer and Coleman Hall. Admission is free. Regular hours ar 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Note: Gualala Arts will be open until 7:00 p.m. on June 10.

The exhibit takes pride in showcasing outstanding visual art and artists without regard to the type of media.  There is no theme for artwork entered in the Gualala Salon & Salon des Refusés, but the show’s concept is based on the original Paris Salon des Refusés exhibition, which took place in Paris in 1863, showing works that had been rejected by the official Paris Salon judges.

The NCAG Board identifies, recruits and selects the show’s judges, and the judges decide which artwork will be accepted and shown in the main Burnett Gallery, the Salon. All work not juried into the Salon by the judges is displayed in the “Salon des Refuses”, located in the Jacob Foyer and Coleman Hall. Works in the Salon des Refuses are eligible for a popular vote award. Thus, all artwork submitted into the show is exhibited. Many artists save their best new art for this exhibit, which showcases outstanding visual art without regard to type of media. The award prizes are the largest offered on the coast. Which artists have been selected into the Salon is a tightly held secret until the opening. Judges for the 2022 exhibit are Drew Fagan and Kristin Otwell.

Drew Fagan received a BFA from Stanford University. His earlier abstract works have been shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the original Spago Restaurant in Hollywood and in other single and group shows. After a long career in advertising, he sold his business and began painting full time as a realist in mid-2004. Since then, he has added many successes to his credit, including 16 solo shows, 17 juried shows, 14 group shows and many national and local awards. Fagan’s studio is just north of Gualala on California’s Mendocino County coast. His work has been featured in American Art Collector and The Artists Magazine and can be found in numerous private and corporate collections in the United States, South America, Europe and Japan.

Kristin Otwell comes from a family of artists and has been making art since she could hold a crayon. Fortunate to have lived in many places including India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Taiwan, she returned to the US in 1968, receiving a BA in fine arts from Mills College in Oakland and studying biological illustration at UC Berkeley. For several years she worked at a school for severely disabled children. Her professional art career began in 1983 with a showing of botanical watercolors at The Nature Company in Berkeley followed by one-person shows at the Oakland Museum and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Otwel moved to the Mendocino Coat in 1985, and in 1992 she and her business partner, Joan Burleigh, founded the Art Explorers, a nonprofit program that serves artists with developmental disabilities. She served as co-director and teacher there until her retirement in 2016.