This was the golden era of animation, when a young Walt Disney was driven and willing to take the risks necessary to build and expand his vision. He strived to find the best artists available, and then created an environment where this talent could flower.

In 1935, Joshua Meador graduated the Art Institute of Chicago cum-laude, but even for an artist of his caliber, there were no jobs. While painting Post Office murals for the WPA a close friend dared him to submit a portfolio to "that animator in California."

Josh took the challenge, submitted his work and Walt hired him in 1937. His first assignment that year was to work as lead animator for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. By 1939, Josh was the Director of Animation Effects, and served as one of the directors for Fantasia.

Our gallery continues to acquire and sell Joshua Meador's paintings, to do research on both his fine art and animation careers, and we are always on the lookout to speak with with anyone who knew Josh back in the day and share their stories via our website and newsletter. Our Joshua Meador page has links to all our Meador paintings and links to all our archived articles of his animation and fine art careers. http://bodegabayheritagegallery.com/Meador_Joshua_.htm

Lawren Harris' most productive period spanned the early 1920's until 1934. His distinctively modern and idealized paintings

have since come to be one part of Canada's national self image, stylized icons of barren shorelines, and expanses of dark water and ice.

Outside of Canada, Lawren Harris is mostly unknown, although American comedian, musician and art collector Steve Martin is working to change that.

Harris was a founding member of Canada's Group of Seven, artists who intentionally set out to establish an authentically Canadian school of painting. Harris began looking at the Canadian landscape in a nationalistic sense, but over time, saw in the landscape inspiration for a refined spiritual expression. His artistic insight lead to his analytic and clinical approach to abstraction, informed by Theosophy and transcendentalism.

This exhibition presents Harris as an innovator on par with Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe. His modernist works of Canada's sparse and iconic landscape have made a lasting impression as art in the Americas was emerging from regionalism and nationalism.

Ice House, Coldwell 1923 depicts a wooden building against steep cliffs, distorted by the harsh geology and climate of the region. The building appears to have done battle with the natural forces surrounding it and will in time decay and be absorbed into the far more powerful landscape. In 1923, Coldwell was a small working fishing village on Lake Superior's north shore, located on the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Pic Island1924 located just off Lake Superior's North Shore is pictured as an image of clarity and spiritual detachment. Clearly defined outlines and flat brushstrokes reduce the landscape to the oppositions between land and water, earth and sky, and light and dark.

Harris believed that Canada's sparse population in such a large land has blessed Canada with a psychic atmosphere, far more clean than that of the United States, where the huddled masses tend to blanket the land. Harris wrote, "We are on the fringe of the great North and its living whiteness, its loneliness and replenishment, its resignations and release, its call and answer, its cleaning rhythms."

Located just east of Pasadena, the grounds of the Huntington Library in San Marino offers 120 acres of manicured specialized botanical gardens, his extensive library of rare books, and two marvelous art collections of 18th, 19th and 20th century paintings from both Europe and America.

The Huntington's European collection houses one of the most distinguished collections of British and French paintings in California.

During our visit, three paintings by French artist Jean Baptiste Camille Corot were on exhibit as well as a series of small works by Honore Daumier. Jules Adolphe Breton's The Last Gleanings is a large painting and literally breathtaking. Two paintings done in Italy by J. M. W. Turner blazed with light. An oil sketch by John Constable was quite eye catching, one of five studies he did as he prepared for a large painting, A Water Mill: Flatford Mill Suffolk in 1812.

Given his European collection, Huntington's American collection is a bit of a surprise. He had a willingness to acquire and promote emerging artists from his time.

Huntington, who was born in 1850, seems to have really enjoyed the work done by the artists of the Ashcan School, Robert Henri, George Luks, George Wesley Bellows and John Sloan. Later acquisitions to the collection include

All in all, both Huntington's European and American collections celebrate an eclectic range of marvelous painters. His art museums, gardens, and library are indeed a wonderful legacy for present day California.

If you've not done so already, on your next excursion to the Southland, put San Marino's Huntington Library on your list of things you don't want to miss.

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art