‘Light Fields’

Though his family tree is a forest of artists — great-grandfather was a landscape painter, father an architect, mother a designer, and their friends were part of the New York modern art scene — he didn’t sink his painting roots fully until his 50s.

Faulkner considers himself “a landscape painter inside an abstract artist.”

Harkening back to Diebenkorn, Faulkner moves from the former’s experiments with urban and interior landscapes to the vistas of Northern California.

His works are luminous semiabstracts. Enough realism to recognize shapes, enough abstraction to allow for your own memories of similar landscapes to form personal interpretations. And certainly full of shimmering color glazing and scumbling, with a soft yet saturated palette that may leave you thinking of Gauguin.

He calls this “invented color space,” with the intention of utilizing overlaid color layers and juxtapositions to imbue the canvas with luminosity. Strong and often saturated, but not jarringly so. He calls them “effusively colorful” and he’s not kidding.

It works. It is both evocative and decorative, simultaneously settling and exciting. His paintings would feel equally at home in a museum or gallery as in a show house.

What distinguishes his approach to color field theory from a Mark Rothko, for example, is that enough of the pattern is recognizable as landscape or cityscape, as are at least some corresponding colors in each piece. His artwork inhabits a pictorial borderland by design.

In this exhibit, his fifth with Pamela Walsh Gallery, his newer works are moving more toward pure abstraction, albeit keeping that exuberant color layering. Color vibrating is a better description.

“Tidepool” is a massive diptych that might remind you of the seascape at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach. You can see the pools in the rocks and way out to the headlands to the north.

“Pink Skies at Night“ is the most representational piece in this show. An orange-red-pink monochromatic scene of trees line what appears to be a pathway.

Some pieces will remind you of the Bay marshes, the hills and the Golden Gate.

“Just Like Heaven“ is far more abstracted, a colorful sky blending almost seamlessly into the land.

Faulkner teaches his students a technique starting with a photo, then overlaying the colors with pastel, later cropping it down to a small piece. That becomes the reference for a large oil painting, and his artworks are large.

You can see that progression in the exhibition postcard, which is actually a cropped portion of “Earth’s Light.”

Faulkner is expanding on the modern colorist heritage of the last 50 years (Refer to Pamela Walsh Gallery website prior shows). Some of his cityscapes employ the color vibrancy and juxtapositions, shape and perspective shifts reminiscent of Wayne Thiebaud’s San Francisco scenes. Where Thiebaud’s gave you vertigo, Faulkner’s slope gently. Paintings of barns and farm buildings have that shimmering color feeling and soft lighting of Wolf Kahn’s rural pastels, not so easy to depict in the oil medium Faulkner uses.

There are certainly landscape paintings in this world that can put you to sleep. The kind of “old-school” vistas that Faulkner avoided. Visual Muzak.

Not Faulkner’s. You’ll be staring at them for a long time. Their essence is deep, deceptively so, because the shapes appear simple at first glance. Take a long look. They have staying power.

“After 30 years as a successful graphic designer, I finally got a real job as an artist,” Faulkner said grinning.

You’ll be glad he did when you visit his show.

Artist reception Jan. 24, from 5-7 p.m. Pamela Walsh Gallery, 540 Ramona St., Palo Alto, pamelawalshgallery.com, (650) 300-6315.

Bart Charlow, author and consultant, has been sketching all his life and painting for over 45 years, had a professional photography business, and leads plein air painting groups. Come along as he shares his insights about the local art scene, and bring your sketchbook. His art and story is at: bartsart.weebly.com.