David Savellano | Capturing the Mood

David Savellano paints on location to convey the atmosphere of each scene

By Bonnie Gangelhoff

Stand at the corner of Columbus and Kearny streets in San Francisco, and you’ll have a terrific view of two of the city’s most recognizable buildings—the Transamerica Pyramid and the Sentinel Building. The futuristic 48-story Transamerica, built in 1972, stands as a symbol of modernity. The Sentinel Building, on the other hand, offers a nod to the past; the wedge-shaped structure, completed in 1907, reflects the more lavish Beaux Arts style fashionable at that time. The buildings are among the most photographed in the city and have attracted many a fine artist, including California native and longtime watercolorist David Savellano.

Last August, Savellano’s painting KEARNY & COLUMBUS was on view in the California Art Club’s annual Gold Medal show at the Hilbert Museum in Orange, CA. The painting sold soon after the show opened. What the collector may not have known is that the artist behind the piece was uniquely qualified to paint it: Savellano is a retired architect with a career that spanned 30 years. It comes as no surprise that he would take inspiration from such a compelling urban vista. Those familiar with the City by the Bay, like Savellano, know that part of its charm is found where the old bumps up against the new.

Savellano’s passion for the Bay area takes him far beyond its architectural landmarks, though. He is best known for his fresh, vibrant scenes that capture everyday life in the city’s colorful neighborhoods—morning deliveries in Chinatown, market day at the Embarcadero, midnight in the Mission, a sidewalk café in the Castro. For slower-paced slices of life, he may set up his portable easel at Crab Cove in the East Bay—a sandy oasis where dog walkers converge with sunbathers and swimmers. “I like capturing the mood of neighborhoods,” Savellano says. “Every subject or location has something special about it. It could be the light and shadows that create the drama that is irresistible to me—or something else entirely.”

A plein-air painter, Savellano completes nearly all of his paintings on location, whether his easel is perched on a street or in a more natural setting. “I like the immediacy of being able to paint something right then and there,” he says. “There is always a danger to overthinking a piece.” After a spell of painting indoors because of the pandemic, the plein-air artist has now returned to his treasured streets. “The outdoors is my studio,” he says.

He’s also returned to plein-air events, including the annual Sonoma Plein Air show in September in Sonoma, CA. He sold seven paintings there, including scenes painted in and around Sonoma Plaza as well as from the streets of San Francisco. In many ways, Savellano is carrying on the traditions of the California Scene painters, a cadre of artists known for their ability to capture views of city and country life. Scene painters, such as Emil Kosa Jr. and Phil Dike in Southern California and Dong Kingman and George Post in Northern California, often painted in watercolors and on location. Savellano’s loose brushwork and talent for capturing moments in time is reminiscent of these earlier painters, who flourished in the Golden State during the 1930s and ’40s.

As a child growing up in Oakland, Savellano enjoyed his elementary- and high-school art classes. In particular, he remembers the intrigue and the challenges of doing blind contour drawings, which he explains as “drawing freehand without looking at the paper.” But in those early days, he didn’t think about becoming an artist. Instead, he developed an interest in architecture. When his uncle, an architectural engineer, showed him drawings of buildings, the renderings fascinated him. His uncle taught him how to use T-squares and triangles in the drawing process. By the time he graduated from high school, he was thinking of architecture as a profession. He applied and was accepted into the program at the University of California, Berkeley. “At the time I thought architecture was the perfect combination of science and art,” Savellano says.

But as the years passed, Savellano found that he needed a more creative outlet than his role at an architectural firm offered. Rather than working in the design studio, he managed construction projects and served as a liaison between the company and its clients. In 1998, to satisfy his artistic side, he began taking watercolor classes at a local community college in Berkeley. Savellano recalls that the cost was a mere $5 per semester; it featured two hours of studio work followed by two hours of painting on location on Saturdays.

He also signed up for workshops with master watercolorists such as Joseph Zbukvic and John Salminen. In 2001, his work was accepted into the California Watercolor Association’s annual national exhibition for the first time. “That was the turning point,” Savellano says. “It validated that I was on the right track. I wasn’t dabbling. I was serious.” In his spare time and on the weekends, he continued to paint and enter watercolor competitions, earning awards and signature memberships in local and national watercolor associations. Savellano credits his 30 years as an architect with imparting the drawing skills and sense of perspective that have contributed to his success in the world of plein-air painting.

Peruse Savellano’s body of work today, and you soon discover that he has painted not only his immediate surroundings in the Bay area but also the landmarks and neighborhoods of grand European cities including Paris, Rome, Venice, and Barcelona, as well as scenes in more far-flung destinations, such as the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. His style remains the same whether close to home or farther afield: fresh, direct, and spontaneous, with a deep understanding of the watercolor medium and its properties. “I know that watercolor controls the situation, and I am just along for the ride,” he says. “If you know the tendencies of watercolors and allow things to happen, there is a lot of spontaneity and many surprises.”

For Savellano, mastering watercolor has a lot to do with timing—knowing when the paper is wet enough but not too wet, or when it’s the right moment to add the next wash. He enjoys mixing the colors directly on the paper, so that they melt into one another. He’s as interested in the medium as he is in the message. And as an artist who paints almost exclusively on location, he is most definitely interested in the weather. Savellano points out that plein-air painters prepare for a variety of environmental conditions, from sun and wind to lightning, rain, and fog. Take Savellano’s experience with the elements as he painted GOING UPCOUNTRY during the Maui Plein Air show in early 2020. The work depicts a scene in Makawao, a mostly agricultural region. The day featured a daunting occupational hazard—rain. “It was a real challenge to paint watercolors during intermittent rain,” Savellano says. “I had to pack up three times and seek shelter at a nearby restaurant with an overhanging roof.”

But he was determined to capture the swirling clouds and the atmosphere of the distant mountains that day. Savellano was rewarded for his perseverance when the painting won an Honorable Mention award. Painting outdoors, he has learned over the years, requires adaptability and speed. “The most alluring subjects are often fleeting or temporary at best,” he says.

In many ways Savellano is a storyteller, a chronicler of the times, and the best way to tell his modern-day tales is to be in the open air. “When you paint outdoors, you’re completely immersed in the scene, the atmosphere, and the mood,” Savellano says. “When I look at one of my paintings, I feel the energy of that place or scene like I was there yesterday. Ultimately, that’s the feeling I’m trying to induce in others who see my work.”

representation
The Village Galleries Maui, Lahaina, HI; www.davidsavellano.com.

This story appeared in the April/May 2022 issue of Southwest Art magazine.