Kelly Rangel Artwork
Kelly Rangel is a plein air painter who lives in north Santa Barbara County. Her subject matter includes the Gaviota Coast to the valleys of Santa Ynez and Lompoc, as well as the Sta. Rita Hills wine country. She says, "It's the amazing beauty here that inspired me to learn how to paint, so I could capture it."
She began the journey by enrolling in an adult Ed program. Many of the teachers there are Oak Group Painters, who painted with the famous Ray Strong. Kelly feels privileged to have taken a workshop with Strong before he passed. She took a year-long leave from her stressful job and just took classes and painted all day.
She starts the process by locating a scene that inspires her by the subject, local color, how the light hits it, then she sets up her gear and gets busy. She mostly paints with oil; she uses acrylic for larger works. She likes to use her a pallet knife as her tool and she paints with a lot of texture. She can create a lot of layers of color, and scrapes and pushes the paint with it. She uses a a brush too, to blend, etc. when she has her composition down. She focuses on color and balancing the complementary colors off of each other is really the fun part. Creating distance and atmosphere, a sense of space on a small canvas is the goal. Sometimes it works, if not she just scrapes off what she did so as not to waste the canvas. The important thing is to enjoy a good day out in the natural world, soaking it up while she can!
Kelly belongs to "SCAPE" (Southern California Artists Painting for the Environment). She exhibits and sells her paintings for preserving important areas such as the Gaviota Coast and other worthy causes. Her work has been in many juried art shows locally, and she has received several awards.
Please visit Kelly's website www.kellyrangel.com that she says, "my techy, beautiful daughter created for me."
Kelly's paintings have been so popular that we've already sold nine over the past couple months. We are thrilled to extend her exhibit through mid January for those who want to purchase a painting for a holiday gift. We especially like the painting of Jalama Beach.
