Winter 2016

Winter 132 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com John Severson (b. 1933) Surf Be Bop, 1963 Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches Collection of John Severson In 1956, John Severson produced the first known series of paintings inspired by the developing Southern California youth surf culture. They are large-scale oil paintings, often painted on Masonite panels. Still finishing his college education at the time, the series was produced for his MFA graduate exhibition at Long Beach State College. During the 1960s, Severson, a dedicated surfer, started Surfer Magazine, the first serial surf-related publication. Initially published to promote the surf movies he was making, it was so successful he made it a bi-monthly publication. Although he sold his interest in Surfer in 1970, it is still the world’s premier surf culture magazine. The early issues of this magazine were full of Severson’s drawings and graphic ideas. Severson reproduced his recently finished Surf Be Bop on the front cover of the 1963 February-March issue. A big hit with surfers, it also received the 1963 Communication Arts publication award for best magazine cover of the year. Severson’s interest in BeBop and West Coast Jazz influenced his name for the work. He once said his inspiration for this painting was an impression of surfers sleeping on Huntington Beach after a long morning surf. He continues to produce drawings, watercolors, oil paintings and acrylic paintings that document the surf culture and from the surfer’s point of view. Dennis Hare (born 1946) The Cove, 1982 Watercolor on paper, 20 x 30 inches Mark and Jan Hilbert Collection Dennis Hare is among the Californian artists recognized as pioneers in the development of photorealism. Viewed from a distance, these works look like they were derived from photographs, but up close the best of these works look quite painterly, and on inspection, can be seen to have been worked on in creative ways. After achieving fame as a beach volleyball player in the the 1970s, Hare focused on an art career. His earliest exhibited works were photorealism watercolors. The Cove, an example of the work he produced in the first years of his professional art career, was inspired by a photograph he took on the beach at Monterey in Northern California. While it is easy to discern its photographic source, up close the painted strokes are obvious and the edges are blended and soft. Hare next became interested in oil painting and gradually developed his own individual abstract approach. At first, what he did was often viewed as an extension of the San Francisco abstract figurative movement of the 1960s, but his best works transcend that comparison. One of these abstract works is also included in the exhibition, and shows how this artist interpreted the California coast culture using two very different styles of art.