SUSAN STREET is Benicia Plein Air Gallery’s June artist of the month. Her work, including “A Resting Spot,” above, and “White Pelicans Return,” below, can be viewed at the gallery, 307 First St. throughout the month.
Courtesy images
Sixteen of Street’s paintings are on the gallery’s feature wall, a colorful variety of oils on canvas that represent the artist’s first work in many years.
Though she started painting in 1963, Street took a long hiatus from art to raise a family and pursue a career in real estate and interior design. She didn’t pick up a brush from the mid-1970s until early 2014.
“I thank Nikki Basch-Davis for urging me to get at it,” she said. “She is kind of my mentor. I appreciate how much she was willing to push me into that.”
This April one of Street’s paintings won first place at the Mare Island Flyway Festival. “I was just floored!” she said. “It’s validating.”
She says she has developed her own style. “I find that I really like using the palette knife a lot. It kind of shows in my work at times. I like the texture that it brings, it is interesting to me.”
Street, who has lived in Benicia since 2000, learned to paint in oils at Grinnell College, in Iowa, in 1963.
She moved to Belmont with her family in the 1970s. She now lives in the Benicia Marina condos.
“I love it. Everybody walks by with their dogs, and we can see the boats coming in and out of the harbor,” she said. “A feast for the eye, 24/7.”
Water figures prominently in Street’s work. The genesis for that may have been her sister Lisa Coop’s invitation to local plein air artists to work off Coop’s houseboat. “They all did paintings off her boat, up at the top.”
Street now goes out to paint regularly with Da Group, plein air painters who gather on Sundays to paint at various locations around the Bay Area. She joined Benicia Plein Air Gallery in April 2014.
“I’m so happy to be there and take part in the gallery. The people there are just really wonderful. I love being part of that group,” she said. “I feel very honored that they accepted me and my work.”
Why “olio”? “When I lived in Belmont, there was a group that put on a melodrama. Between the acts of the melodrama, there were olios,” Street said. “It’s the variety act between the melodrama.”
Her art, she said, represents “a variety of approaches to scenes in Benicia.”
She said most of the paintings were finished within the last two months.
“I tried to do new ones. I like to offer new work … if someone is going to take the time to come see my work, I like to try to offer something fresh and new.”
If You Go
An opening reception for Susan Street’s show “Benicia: an Olio in Oils” will take place 5-7 p.m. June 13 at Benicia Plein Air Gallery, 307 First St.
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