❒ Catherine Fasciato is Plein Air’s featured artist

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Concord resident Catherine Fasciato is a member of the Benicia plein air painting group Da Group, but even so, she often prefers to paint alone.

Though she’s worked with Da Group for about five years, “Sometimes I want to just go paint by myself,” she said. “I find I do better work when I’m alone. I tend to like to have my own schedule.”

Fasciato is Benicia Plein Air Gallery’s featured artist for the month of August. A reception for her show, “Illusion,” will be held Saturday.

“I was just thinking one day, and I remember somebody saying, ‘Art, it’s all an illusion,’” Fasciato said.

Fasciato’s show consists of 10 paintings, most of them products of her plein air work, as well as a still life to show her interest in other styles, too.

Her interests, in fact, are as varied as her upbringing. Born in Hong Kong, she lived there until she was 9, then moved with her family to Yorkshire, England. At 17 she returned to the British colony, where she stayed until moving to California in the mid-1970s.

Fasciato drew and painted a lot when she was younger, but gave it up for about 20 years because, she said, she felt “guilty.”

“I felt guilty. I felt that I ought to be earning money doing a 9-to-5 job,” she said.

“Then I met some people who were doing watercolors and selling their watercolors. They were having fun and they weren’t guilty at all. So I felt that, well, if they can do it, I can do it.”

Fasciato does a lot of studio, landscape and portrait work. She is self-taught, and enjoys taking classes and attending workshops.

That was how she was introduced to plein air.

“Mary Lou Correia was my first plein air teacher,” she said. “I took her class for a while, then I heard about Pam Glover, so I started taking classes with Pam Glover for about three years.”

Fasciato paints from a live model three times a week under the instruction of Bob Gerbracht in San Francisco, and she does plein air painting as often as she can.

She recently participated in a pair of juried plein air exhibits, one in Crockett’s Epperson Gallery and the other in Alameda’s Frank Bette Center for the Arts.

Like many artists and photographers, Fasciato prefers late-afternoon light for her art. “I like painting in the winter because sunset is so early,” she said. She’ll occasionally paint night scenes — she once painted the neon-lit Toots Tavern in Crockett in the dark, and “I’ve painted night scenes of lit restaurants, cafés with people inside” — but “I do prefer late afternoon, just before sunset light.”

Like many plein air painters, Fasciato works in oils. But she prefers to use a brush rather than a palette knife.

“I do use the palette knife occasionally, but mostly I use the brush,” she said.

“I like the effects that the brushes do — I love brush strokes. I have more control with the brush. The palette knife is great for laying on the paint, like if you’re painting a sunset — quick colors in the sky and laying it on thick. But if you want more control, I prefer the brush.”

If You Go
A reception for Catherine Fasciato will be Saturday at the Plein Air Gallery, 307 First St., from 6-8 p.m.