Art Galleries

Jay Welden's watercolors of mountainous landscapes and watery byways are big, bold, and vigorous. Hiking up into the remote country around his home near Strawberry up Highway 50, Welden gives us plein-air paintings done on site, as evidenced from a group of photos that show his working process.

The works of legendary Bay Area Figurative painter Theophilus Brown, who died in February at the age of 92, were prized by his fellow artists.

Clay can be thrown on a wheel, molded, coiled, rolled into slabs, carved, kneaded, thinned and poured, burnished or glazed, and then fired into a hard substance that mimics nature or revels in its own materiality.

Gina Werfel's abstractions at Alex Bult Gallery prompt comparisons with the works of abstract expressionists Willem de Kooning and Joan Mitchell.

Sacramento's art community is buzzing over the sudden closure of the Solomon Dubnick Gallery, one of the region's most prestigious and venerable art showcases.

Two shows that explore the art of angling prompt thoughts about the relationship between fishing and making art.

The Crocker Art Museum announced that it will be the recipient of a collection by renown California Impressionist painter Guy Rose.

Gina Werfel's gestural abstractions are layered with evidence of the actions of their making. Her immediate and improvisational markings achieve a kinship with music and dance.

Most galleries have some sort of back room, where they keep examples of works by artists they represent. Some are as small as file drawers where works on paper can be stored. Others are warehouses where large paintings and sculptures dwell.

The cone bra. Men in kilts and codpieces. Corsets as outerwear.

Even if you're not a devotee of haute couture, the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit at the de Young Museum is an opportunity to almost rub shoulders with the gorgeous Gaultier gown worn by actress Marion Cotillard at the 2008 Academy Awards (180 hours in the making) or one of Madonna's many corsets.

Less than 12 hours after learning of Thomas Kinkade's death, gallery co-owner Nathan Ross found himself trying to handle the overwhelming demand inside the two-story building on Placerville's main drag.

Hidden stories and encoded messages underlie the works of Irving Marcus and Laura Hohlwein.

A phalanx of ancient Chinese warriors fills the historic ballroom in the old wing of the Crocker Art Museum.

Groundbreaking feminist artist Judy Chicago, whose "The Dinner Party" became an icon of the women's movement when she completed it in 1979, is the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Crocker Art Museum.

"Six Artists and a Model" features the works of Boyd Gavin, Marcy Friedman, Pat Mahony, Meech Miyagi, Jian Wang and Brooke Walker Knoblich.

Peacock feathers, Japanese fans and blue and white pottery are some of the objects that appear in paintings and interiors in a show centered on the Aesthetic Movement, a late 19th century British school of art, at San Francisco's Legion of Honor Museum.

Looking at Gene Cooper's paintings at Alex Bult Gallery is a little like playing TV's "Jeopardy." The category is Art and Artists. and the clues are visual.

Bringing together artists and farmers in Yolo County is not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Edgar Payne, one of the most accomplished California landscape painters in the early 20th century, seems to have been destined to become an artist.

Southern California painter Gene Cooper offers a series of portraits of famous artists, among them John Singer Sargent, at Alex Bult Gallery.

Religious sisters have long been iconic figures, sometimes foreboding (think: Catholic school), invariably benevolent and long shrouded in mystery to the outside world.

Citing a lack of financial contributions, Lincoln Arts, the nonprofit behind the nationally known Feats of Clay sculpting competition, abruptly announced Friday that it was ending operations.

Christopher Taggart started his college studies in physics and switched to art when he went to graduate school

Free pass to the museums? Capital! For just one day, you're invited to ogle many of the region's priciest possessions and priceless artifacts, and it won't cost you a penny.

You would expect an exhibition at a college gallery to be educational. Gioia Fonda's show at the James Kaneko Gallery on the American River College campus is that in spades.

A huge farm machine rises up over tiny field workers in Jeff Myers' "Field Boss," a dynamic large-scale painting at the Alex Bult Gallery.

Alex Bult Gallery Old farm equipment, city grids and agricultural landscapes morph into each other in Jeff Myers' new paintings at Alex Bult Gallery, 1114 21st St., Suite B. (916) 476-5540.

A young boy sits in front of a dark opening into a decaying structure. He is wearing the mask of an old man and holding a doll in one arm.

An early California plein-air painter, a groundbreaking feminist artist and a hometown boy who has become an international artist will be the subjects of three retrospective exhibitions at the Crocker Art Museum in 2012.

Something there is that doesn't love an unmarked wall calendar, as Robert Frost might have said. Maybe it's those geometric rows of blank squares, fallow as winter fields, bereft of plans and absent of activities, longing to be filled lest we fret living out our days in idle tedium.

Kenneth Potter, an internationally renowned artist in Fair Oaks who was a leading exponent of the California Style of watercolor painting, died Tuesday of lung cancer, his family said. He was 85.

On the face of it, "The Big Show" at Axis Gallery seems an incongruous title. But the "big" of the title refers to more than size.

Here are our picks for Second Saturday art gallery showings.

Italian art seems to be everywhere this fall. "Masters of Venice," which opened in October at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, offers a rare look at Italian painters from Venice in the 16th century.