Show Preview | Cabrera, Jensen & Gang - Southwest Art Magazine

Pasadena, CA
Tirage Fine Art Gallery, September 9-October 2

Armand Cabrera, First Light, oil, 9 x 12.

This story was featured in the September 2017 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art September 2017 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

Although Impressionism originated in Europe in the mid-19th century, it quickly found American patrons and proponents. In the early 20th century, California became known for its own unique version, which differentiated itself with its focus on the state’s unique light and its attention to representational form. This month Tirage Fine Art Gallery highlights three painters—Xu Gang, Brent Jensen, and Armand Cabrera—who work in a range of these impressionistic styles in a show that opens with an artists’ reception on Saturday, September 9, at 5 p.m., and which marks Gang’s first official show with the gallery.

: Xu Gang, Yacht Harbor at Newport Beach, 14 x 22.

: Brent Jensen, Colorado Street Bridge, oil, 16 x 20.

: Armand Cabrera, Ediza Lake Inlet, oil, 10 x 12.

“We were introduced to Xu Gang last fall by famed California artist Jason Situ,” who knew him in China, says gallery co-owner Kevin Casey. “Our clients know Armand and Brent, but they haven’t all seen the extent of the work that Xu Gang is capable of producing. This is a great opportunity to introduce him to an American audience and to let them experience classic French Impressionism expertly translated to the American West.”

Casey says that the three artists present a spectrum of Impressionism, with Cabrera at one end and Gang at the other with the loosest technique. Cabrera brings his more reserved impressionism to renderings of the places he knows best, California and Virginia, including the District of Columbia. “I’m trying to focus on places I have a connection to,” he says. “Places where I have painted for years.” Subject matter for this show ranges from a Sierra Nevada lake to D.C.’s Thomas Jefferson Memorial as the first warm light of morning bathes the dome, the cherry trees lining the tidal basin in full bloom. “When you first start out,” Cabrera says, “you want to paint all of these grand, spectacular things, but now I find myself trying to paint more intimate scenes and light effects.”

: Armand Cabrera, Inyo Mountains Sunset, oil, 24 x 30.

: Armand Cabrera, Magic Moments, oil, 9 x 12.

: Armand Cabrera, Summer Fog, oil, 18 x 24.

: Xu Gang, Flower Fields, oil, 24 x 30.

: Xu Gang, Paris Beauty, oil, 24 x 29.

: Xu Gang, Pink Flowers, oil, 28 x 22.

Jensen lives in San Francisco, but his works for this show focus on favorite spots in Pasadena, such as the Colorado Street Bridge. “It’s not just a bridge,” Jensen explains. “It’s an amazing piece of architecture. It reminds me of the bridges crossing the Seine in Paris.” Jensen loves to travel, and his paintings—rendered in more of the California Impressionist style—often reflect urban and rural scenes across Europe and South America. Lately, though, he’s been sticking closer to home, he says: “I’m trying to be a little more green in my thinking, a little more eco-friendly. I am finding a lot of beauty around here that I wouldn’t normally think about.”

Gang studied art in China and has taught in Asia, across Europe, and here in the United States. He paints in the traditional French style and brings scenes of European landscapes and still lifes, California’s harbors and hills, and even the Grand Canyon. “The California landscape is new to him. It’s not like the classical Chinese and French landscapes he’s been doing,” Casey says. “We were taken with how he was using that classical French Impressionism and applying it to California scenes.” —Laura Rintala

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www.tirageart.com