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The Sierra Nevada's oldest continuously operating gallery since 1945 |
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| Gary Lake | (1) (2) (3) (4) (Home) |
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Mt. Sill & Gayley 24 x36 oil/canvas by Gary Lake |
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When he was nine years old, Gary Lake moved to Bishop, California to live with his grandparents. He spent summers at their cabin in Mammoth Lakes, hiking and fishing the backcountry basins. In elementary school, Lake ate at the old Golden State Cafe on Main Street in Bishop, California. Hanging on the restaurant walls were the beautiful Sierra landscape paintings of local artist Robert Clunie, a member of the California Art Club. Young Lake was so inspired by the realism and accurate palette of those bigger-than-life Clunie paintings, he knew that art was to be his own destiny. |
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At the onset of the Korean War, Lake dropped out of high school and joined the Navy working first as a radar man, then as a draftsman/illustrator for the Commander of Battleships and Cruisers, Atlantic Fleet. When he left the Navy, he put together an art portfolio and was accepted to Art Center College of Design. When he graduated, he went to work for GM in Detroit as a graphic and exhibit designer. Lake missed the wide open country of the Eastern Sierra Nevada and after two hard, cold winters in Detroit, he returned to California. He enrolled at California State University Los Angeles and earned his teaching credential. Lake made monthly visits to the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles where the works of Edgar Payne, William Wendt, Hanson Duvall Puthuff and other California impressionists were on display. He found inspiration in Edgar Payne's classic book "The Composition of Outdoor Painting" and joined the California Art Club as a painting member. Lake won first place for one of his landscapes at the annual California Art Club show at the Greek Theater in Hollywood. Lake embraced the artistic interpretations and colorful palettes of the early California impressionists. Influenced by these artists, Lake captured the impressions of nature in his oil paintings--while always staying true to the details of his subjects. In the early 1960s, Bishop artist Robert Clunie and his wife Myrtle, rented one of their studio apartments to Lake's mother. It was through this connection that Lake accompanied Clunie on his annual summer painting trip to Fourth and Fifth Lakes in Big Pine Canyon. In the mountains, Clunie spoke of the early California Art Club painters including artist Edgar Payne who often visited Clunie at his Big Pine camp years before. Permanently settling in Bishop with his wife Donna, Lake taught art at the local high school where he mastered the process of serigraphy. Lake's serigraphs, rich in the soft color and texture of nature are a testament to his craftsmanship and sense of design. Each color is painted on the screen, then hand-pulled, one color at a time, layer over layer, with as many as 43 layers of color in one silkscreened image. His serigraphs are an amazing accomplishment of craftsmanship, creativity and design. |
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