Dan Charlesworth
Featured Artist - El Calendario de Todos Santos,
May 2001
Dan
Charlesworth is a self-taught artist. He was one of the first foreign
artists to move to Todos Santos. Born and raised in the Napa Valley of
California, his early life was conventional, revolving around sports,
girls, cars and school. After the Kennedy assassination however, things
began to change. "I got caught up in the civil rights movement and was
an early protester against the war in Vietnam."
Dan graduated from Sonoma State College in 1966. He immediately joined the Peace Corps and spent the next two years working for the health department in southern Thailand. He enjoyed living in a totally different culture, and internalized many of the Thai cultural values. "I liked the sense of oneness with nature, the patience and tolerance, and especially the reverence for all life evident in this very mellow Buddhist culture." The experience changed him.
On the way home in 1968, he visited the island of Bali and saw all the beautiful artwork there - all kinds of paintings, wood carvings, classic dance, even the rice paddies were sculptured with an artist's loving hand. He fell in love with this world and lifestyle. This is when Dan decided to take up painting. "What a great lifestyle… to be able to live simply, not caught up in the rat-race, and occasionally sell a painting to help pay the bills."
When Dan first came to Todos Santos and saw the palm trees, mangos, bougainvillea, beautiful beaches, thatched palm roofs, great climate and friendly people, he knew he had found his little slice of southeast Asia here.
Dan's works are displayed locally at the Galería de Todos Santos.
Wendy Faith
Featured Artist - El Calendario de Todos Santos,
November 1999
Wendy
Faith Wendy was born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and lived
most of her adult life on Mayne Island where she raised two sons. Wendy
moved to Todos Santos in 1992 and opened a successful bed and breakfast,
Hosteria Las Casitas. In 1998, Wendy added a new art glass studio to her
Las Casitas location.
Wendy specializes in architectural quality art glass; she produces works by commission and artist pieces. She creates windows, door panels, skylights, ambiance lighting, objets d'art and a line of kiln worked dinnerware.
A self-taught artist, Wendy has experimented with a wide variety of materials and techniques. She has worked extensively with cloth, wood, paint and light metal, but her main focus for the last 20 years has been glass. Wendy feels that simple practice has been the essence of her artistic evolution.
"When the first try doesn't get you there, you just keep at it - always with an exacting eye to improvement. Never accept second best effort. It is a rigorous way to learn, but has the charm of discovering wonderland for one's own self."
Wendy has participated in past Todos Santos Art Festivals in shows at Galería de Todos Santos. Her works can be viewed at her art glass studio at Las Casitas - calling ahead is suggested.
"The harmony of sense and sound that I reap in dance and song is the same harmony of line, color and texture that I sense in 3 dimensional media." - Wendy Faith
Robert Gordon
Featured Artist - El Calendario de Todos Santos,
November 2001
We
are not expatriates. Not really. America is so near. We fly back and forth.
Keep in touch by Internet and satellite dish. In summer we ditch the heat
of Todos Santos; return in November like migratory birds.
Robert Gordon is an expatriate. Most of his 71 years he's spent in Puerto Rico, Japan, mainland Mexico… The America he knows is a square, soulless, screwed up place, and Eisenhower is president. Pleasant memories of studying architecture at UC Berkeley, taking the train across the bridge to hit the bars and Beat hangouts in North Beach - and then a 40-year blank. Pop culture references - e.g., "Gilligan's Island architecture" - are lost on Robert. It's amazing how much and how little he's missed.
I know Robert Gordon as well as anyone here does, which is not much. Hundreds of hours in the company of his excellent gin and tonics, I can fill the above paragraph and maybe a couple more. His Zen Buddhism, his journey from architect to artist, his restless moving suggest a search for beauty and genuineness. In Todos Santos he found beauty, at any rate, and through his colorful paintings has made of beauty a gift to the rest of us.
Mind you, this is not Yoda. Robert Gordon can be irascible, brutally frank, eloquently scatological. Certain sociability has served his lonely discipline as an artist. I don't know what you did with your summer, but while I was dicking away mine in the states, Robert stayed in Todos Santos and created fifteen oil paintings.
The colors are so bright as to be incredible - until you realize these are the fantastic colors of nature all around us. A long-time master of watercolors, Robert switched to oils at age 70 precisely to get these intense lights and darks. A tough transition, he admitted, "like anything. Like mowing a lawn. You have to do it a few times to get it right." The theme of these works is The Garden, suggesting enclosure, private space… "Lord, don't go there," he says. "It's just a bunch of plants."
We like to attach a painter to a painting. We want a personality that explicates the wordless mystery of what we're seeing, or reinforces what we think we're seeing. Or perhaps just a little anecdote or two as garnish, because we want more than just the naked "IT." Maybe with Robert Gordon it's just about the painting. Beautiful. Genuine. Private.
Robert Gordon's painting are shown at Galería
de Todos Santos.
Text by Michael Mercer.
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