Dixie Mohan’s exhibit opens at Plein Air on Saturday

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Dixie Mohan loves the water. She kayaks, dives and swims — and she loves to be near the water when she paints.

Mohan’s love of water is evident in the work she has on display this month at Benicia Plein Air Gallery, where she is the featured artist for August.

The paintings are scenes from around Benicia and the Bay Area, as well as Minnesota and Australia, but they all have one thing in common: water.

“A lot of what I do has water in it,” Mohan said. “Whether it’s consciously or not, I keep coming back to water, and being in water, or by water.”

The central work of the exhibit, titled “Gull Friends #1,” was a painting Mohan started when she lived in Australia for three years.

She had moved there in 2003 with her husband Mike, and studying at an art center in Fremantle, Western Australia, she began to paint in earnest for the first time.

“I did very little plein air painting because the sun is so dangerous there, you really have to be careful,” she said. “I painted a lot from photographs, and did more studio work.”

That’s how “Gull Friends” developed, but “I really didn’t know how to finish it, so I put it away when we moved back to this country,” she said.

“I took it out last year, and thought, ‘This really is a nice painting. This painting has possibilities, I should finish it.’”

Another piece is a scene overlooking Eckley, which is close to Crockett.

“I love to kayak in the strait, and my husband often drops me off in Eckley and I kayak back to Martinez. Or depending on the tide, sometimes he’ll drop me off in Martinez and I’ll kayak to Eckley,” Mohan said.

“It’s not just being a water person, it’s also that water does so many interesting things when you’re looking at it. It has terrific reflections on it that constantly change as the day goes on, and its also affected by the wind, and whatever the content of the water is.”

A UC-Berkeley graduate and former elementary school teacher, Mohan is also a member of Benicia’s Da Group, a group of plein air painters.

That association began when she returned from Australia in 2006 and took a painting class with Jerrold Turner through Arts Benicia.

“Benicia is such a great community to be an artist in,” she said. “I had bought one of (Turner’s) paintings in the ‘80s, a train painting of Crockett. I bought it as a birthday present for my husband, and I always loved that painting, (but) I never knew the painter. I was always looking for him.

“A friend said, ‘I think that artist is over at Arts Benicia, and I think you can take classes from him.’ And Da Group had just formed before that.”

A “meet the artist” reception celebrating Mohan’s latest exhibit will be Saturday from 3-7 p.m., coinciding with both the Art Walk and the Peddler’s Fair.

If You Go
Meet Dixie Mohan Aug. 10 from 3-7 p.m. at Benicia Plein Air Gallery, 307 First St., coinciding with Benicia’s Second Saturday Art Walk and the Peddler’s Fair.