The Oak Group, a seasoned landscape painter coalition with a mission, is currently enjoying the generous institutional embrace of the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, in one of its stronger and more self-defining showings of recent years. The show takes its title, The Grace of the World, from a fitting Wendell Berry quote: “I come into the peace of wild things … rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Wild things — more specifically: wild, natural spaces — are central to the manifesto of the Oak Group. For nearly four decades in the trenches and the fields, the group has been dedicated to creating a growing body of sensitive plein air paintings, primarily focusing on the rich and as-yet-developed spaces in Santa Barbara County and the Channel Islands. This current sampling of the group’s art becomes an affirmation of a long-held passion, as well as a ripe primer on the Oak Group, for viewers new to the phenom.
One of the group’s founders and distinctive painters is Arturo Tello, who also runs the Palm Loft gallery in Carpinteria, a common source of his painting settings. His statement in the museum speaks volumes about the Oak Group’s philosophical mandate: “A landscape painting is a celebration of beauty, a prayer of gratitude for open spaces, and the path to intimacy with Nature. I see the role of the landscape painter not as a dreamer, but as an active defender of the land.”