Eight Washingtonians and Three Moons, July 1985
Oil on canvas
48 x 72 inches
Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present Frederick Wight: Visions of California. The exhibition opens on Saturday, April 16, with a reception from 6-9 pm and continues through Saturday, July 16, 2005.
In 1973, after his retirement from an illustrious tenure as UCLA’s premiere museum director, curator and teacher, Frederick Wight became available to fulfill his persistent and acute gifts as a painter. Finally, Wight was free to become what he had always most truly been: a full-time immensely skilled and serenely articulate artist.
The works included in this exhibition, executed during the last decade of his life, celebrate the openhearted feeling of the artist for sun-drenched Southern California landscapes. In a sense, Wight’s California-specific scenes are all portraits: dreamily evocative settings that represent not only the mystery of the land but also the personal mystery of life itself.
Palm trees, resilient giants, tremble yet maintain their iconic posture in the face of a ruthless Santa Ana wind. The reflection of a luminous moon on rougher darker ocean waters creates a carpet of glowing rainbow color. A burst of morning sun radiates light through the desert sky in the shape of an exploding star. Palm trees, suns and moons seem factual enough, but in Wight’s paintings they become expressions of deeply felt poetry.
In this, his last and most significant body of work, Wight reveals himself to be the most luminous of visionaries: an individual unafraid of using the natural world to express his thoroughly lived, truly earned sense of wonder.
Frederick Wight’s work is included in numerous public and private collections. Louis Stern Fine Arts is the exclusive representative of the artist’s estate. This marks Wight’s first exhibition with the gallery.