Just announced: The Laguna Plein Air Painters Association’s 27th Invitational and this year’s Gallery Exhibition Master Artists. From the organizers:
LPAPA: Beyond the Landscape
The Laguna Plein Air Painters Association (LPAPA) is known for its prestigious Laguna Beach Plein Air Painting Invitational, now in its 27th year. What may not be known is LPAPA opened its own nonprofit art gallery in Laguna Beach in 2021; and while they continuously strive to promote the legacy of plein air painting, LPAPA is not only about ‘plein air’ art.
Plein air painting, or the practice of painting outdoors, informs the artist’s studio work when their studies, sketches, and color notes are brought back to the studio to create larger studio paintings.
Some artists become so proficient at completing a work of art onsite, that the plein air painting is framed and sold as is. Some collectors enjoy collecting the artist’s outdoor studies. The artists selected to participate in LPAPA’s annual Laguna Beach Plein Air Painting Invitational are the top award-winning outdoor painters from across the country, and outside the US.
Some artists evolve to a point in their careers where they retire from painting competitions, or rarely compete in painting invitationals. LPAPA believes, however, that their work should be seen and celebrated with the LPAPA community of artists and patrons. Each year since opening the LPAPA Gallery in 2021, LPAPA has invited an artist to paint for a “Master Exhibition” showcased at the gallery. Past Master Artists have been Kathleen Dunphy, Jove Wang, Ray Roberts, and John Cosby.
Introducing the 2025 LPAPA Gallery Exhibition Master Artists
This year LPAPA is excited to announce that Jove Wang will return to exhibit with two other Master Artists, Scott Burdick and Dan McCaw.
This special exhibition goes far beyond what you would expect to see at the LPAPA Gallery. The show opens in Laguna Beach on June 5 with an Art Walk Reception, and continues through June 30. Subscribers to LPAPA’s free E-News will have the opportunity to preview the show online beginning June 2.
Scott Burdick
Scott Burdick was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1967 where his mother and father early on encouraged his interest in art.
“I spent a lot of time in hospitals as a child and remember my mother showing me how to transform simple shapes like circles, triangles, and squares into objects like planes, helicopters, and fish,” Scott said. “It seemed like such a magical thing and made spending so much time in casts and on crutches much more bearable.
“I see painting as both a way of exploring the world and then as the vehicle of sharing those discoveries with others. I travel to find subjects to paint, as much as paint, so I can travel and expand my horizons. Through this unique language, one can say things that are impossible with words.”
Scott participated in the first Laguna Plein Air Painting Invitational in 1999, and returned to compete in 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2006, receiving numerous awards. Although he continues to paint the landscape, especially in his travels, he’s also known for his portrait and figurative work.
He explains, “What makes a portrait a good painting is simple. Emotion. If you look at a portrait, or any other painting for that matter, and feel nothing but admiration for the technical skill, it is pointless, in my opinion. A certain lack of technical skill can be forgiven if the emotion still shows through, but the opposite is never true.”
Dan McCaw
Dan McCaw is a contemporary American artist who lives and works in Torrance, California with his two accomplished artist sons, John and Danny.
Dan’s work is a bridge between his traditional background and the contemporary influences that continually impact his art. Strong design is the foundation that his work is based upon, but curiosity is the fuel that drives his creativity. “Art flourishes in change, it expands when its limits are limitless,” he says. “The artist must remain open to its possibilities and eliminate the dispassionate. The dignity of art is not in its constants but in the liberation of its possibilities.”
Influenced by the classical Masters at an early age, Dan has seen his appreciation and seduction for many different genres of art: “Anything that makes me think, makes me engage and broadens my perceptions, is of great importance and interest to me.” Dan says he tries to make his paintings somewhat ambiguous so that the viewer, if they wish, can participate and walk through a door that he just holds open, what you find inside becomes your own. If he defines or explains everything, Dan feels that he robs you of your own experience.
He explains, “Painting is an intimate conversation within ourselves, the canvas is like the pages of a diary, and at times the artist is willing to share this intimate conversation. The pages are fragile, the edges frayed, some have been torn out of frustration, some smeared from fear of failure, some wrinkled from being held too tight, some have been dipped in dreams and dried in the sun and some are waiting to be turned. What is said between the words becomes more important than the words themselves. Art at its best moves something that is indefinable within myself. This is why I turn the pages.”
Jove Wang
Jove Wang was born in Jilin, China in 1962. At the tender age of seven, he apprenticed with the master oil painter Gang Gu, subsequently studying at Jilin School of Art for three years and graduating in 1982. He was accepted into the most prestigious art institute of China, Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now known as China Academy of Art), and graduated as an honor student in 1988. In 1990 he immigrated to the United States where he soon met with success. Immersing himself in the art study and exploration of old Masters, he has established a career that has garnered him national recognition.
Jove participated in the Laguna Beach Plein Air Painting Invitational in 2000 and 2001, and returned to compete in 2005, 2007, 2012, 2017, and 2018, as well as 2021, 2022, and 2024, receiving numerous awards. Jove is known for his expressive landscapes and portraits.
Jove shares, “I have made it my goal: Each work I paint has to be endowed with its own life and soul from deep within; be it a drama, an opera, a poem, or even a fantasy. In terms of concept and thinking of creation, I adopt the point-line-mass elements of modern design aesthetic, the expression performance of oil painting and the coordinated change of overall colors to make paintings full of life and vitality. Meanwhile, realistic tactics are used to express the spirit of modern expressionism.”
LPAPA’s President Toni Kellenberg adds, “LPAPA is a vibrant, growing artists community that connects painters to Laguna’s century-old legacy as an Art Colony. We celebrate the arts and artists by welcoming artists to join LPAPA and participate in juried art shows that are exhibited at the LPAPA Gallery. With the exception of the annual Best of Plein Air, all of LPAPA’s juried shows are open to both plein air and studio art submissions, and a new exhibition is hung each month.”
View more fine art gallery exhibitions here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.
