JIM LENARZ

Born: Sacramento, 1953

Education:

            2003-2005, CSU Sacramento, studied with Tom Monteith

            1976-1977, CSU Sacramento, Graduate Studies

            1973-1976, CSU Sacramento, Bachelor's Degree, Fine Art - concentration: painting

            1971-1973, Sacramento City College                        

Awards:   

            2005 – 2nd Place - St John’s Religious Art Festival

22222222003 - Award of Merit, Roseville Arts Center 28th Annual Open Show

While at Sacramento City College I studied with Darrell Forney and Laureen Landau. It was Darrell Forney who introduced me to the work of Giorgio Di Chirico, whose ‘metaphysical’ paintings had a great influence on my early work.

At CSUS, I studied with Irving Marcus, William Allan, Jack Ogden, Esteban Villa, Carlos Villa, Gerald Walburg, Joan Moment, Jimmy Suzuki and many other artists that taught there at the time. Out all my teachers I had, Bill Allan was the one that I most related to and was influenced by. His highly detailed, poetic and somewhat mysterious paintings of clouds, fish and landscape struck a chord with me. 

I didn’t get a chance to study with Joseph Raffael because he left CSUS just as I was starting there. But his paintings, especially his monumental water paintings have had a lasting influence on me as well.

It wasn’t until I left CSUS that I began to paint landscapes. All my college work was very serious, had deep meaning and was full of angst. I wanted to take a break from all that and started painting landscapes and found that I really enjoyed it. I’ve been painting landscapes ever since. I began hiking to a favorite spot on the Yuba River to paint. I have been fishing and gold panning on this one stretch of river since I worked at a nearby summer camp as a teenager. This part of the river is very remote and not known by many, which makes it that much more special to me. But the ruggedness of the trail made it difficult to paint on site. Now I paint in the studio from photographs that I’ve taken on location.
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