"Women by Women"

An exhibit of drawings and paintings featuring women created by top female artists will be on display Thursday, Feb. 13, through Saturday, April 12 at California Lutheran University’s Kwan Fong Gallery of Art and Culture.

Exhibitor Ruth Weisberg, the former dean of the University of Southern California Roski School of Art and Design whose drawings and paintings have been featured in more than 200 exhibitions, will give a public presentation at 4:15 p.m. Monday, March 3, as part of The Representational Art Conference being presented by CLU.

For “Women by Women,” curator Michael Pearce asked the artists to submit works that focus on women as their subjects in order to explore what female artists make of their own gender. In addition to Weisberg, the artists are Sharon Allicotti, Juliette Aristides, Candice Bohannon Reyes, Kathiucia Dias, Pam Hawkes, Kathryn Jacobi, Teresa Oaxaca, Carolin Peters, Kate Savage, Betty Shelton, Terry Spehar-Fahey and Sadie Valeri.

Allicotti, of Los Angeles, draws and paints desert scenes. Aristides, the founder of Aristides Atelier at the Gage Academy of Fine Art in Seattle, is a leader in the movement to revive the practice of students learning by working alongside masters in their studios.  

Northern California-based Bohannon Reyes received a certificate of excellence in the Portrait Society of America’s 2012 International Portrait Competition. Brazilian-born Dias paints and draws portraits, landscapes and still lifes.

Jacobi is a classically trained contemporary realist painter and printmaker based in Los Angeles. Medieval revivalist Hawkes is sending her work from England, where she lives and teaches fine art courses. Oaxaca is a young painter from Washington, D.C., whose baroque works are simultaneously seductive and disturbing. Peters, of Orange, focuses her large-scale, figurative paintings and drawings on emotionally saturated moments staged in nature.

Savage, of Los Angeles, paints landscapes, objects and people that reflect her fascination with nature and love of simplicity. Shelton, of Laguna Beach, takes inspiration for her metaphorical, realistic figurative paintings from contemporary culture.

Spehar-Fahey, a watercolor painter from Moorpark, teaches at CLU. Valeri is an internationally recognized still life oil painter who founded the activist group "Women Painting Women," which highlights female figurative artists.

Admission to the exhibit and events are free. The gallery is located in the Soiland Humanities Center at 120 Memorial Parkway on the Thousand Oaks campus. Gallery hours are from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Parking is available in the lots on Mountclef Boulevard.

CLU’s Art Department is sponsoring the exhibit. For more information, visit callutheran.edu/kwan_fong or call Michael Pearce at 805-444-7716.