There are few things Robert Wassell would rather do than paint, and there is no area he'd rather paint than the region's mountains and trails.
"The Pristine Ventura Wilderness," consisting of works he painted in the past year,Replacement landscape oil paintings and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide. is his exhibit running through Nov.which applies to the first offshore merchant account only, 14 at the Harbor Village Gallery, 1591 Spinnaker Drive in Ventura.
"Everything is Ventura or Santa Barbara counties,Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems," Wassell said,ceramic magic cube for the medical, walking among the oil paintings on exhibit. "I haven't painted outside this area since I moved here in 1985.
"I think we have the equivalent of a Yosemite in our backyard here, and we don't have the crowds. It takes a little work because they are not alongside the roads," he added.
At patrons' suggestions, he started naming the paintings for the trails — Tar Creek, Sespe, Little Mutau, Inspiration Point, Cathedral Peak and the Punch Bowl — so they could find the spot.
He calls his style "Wassellian expressionism."
"It's not impressionism," he said. "I don't try to get those atmospheric effects."
He is most influenced by Van Gogh and Gauguin, the artist said.
"When I discovered Van Gogh my senior year in high school, it was almost an epiphany," he said. "That was exactly what I wanted to be painting. I hadn't seen anything even close to that before."
Wassell grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania. When he was about 12, his parents gave him a choice of taking music or art lessons.
"I chose art lessons and immediately fell in love with it," he said.
Despite his teachers' encouragement and his parents' support, Wassell was his own worst critic, and nine years passed before he did a painting he thought was good. He took private lessons for six years with watercolorist Alice Welsh Jenkins, then majored in art at Wilkes College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He transferred to Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore after two years and got a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1975.He started painting landscapes at the institute.
"I painted independently and would take my work into class, and I was on the dean's list for that," Wassell said.
After college, he joined the Navy and painted wherever he was stationed: France, Spain and Italy. After he left the service, he needed nine months to find a job, so he painted full time.
A friend got him a job in quality control at Bechtel Corp.It's hard to beat the versatility of polished tiles on a production line. He kept working in quality control, the last 25 years in aerospace in Southern California.
His parents retired to Southern California, and he started painting here while visiting them.
"I fell in love with the area," he said. "I came out for the Christmas holiday and never left."
Wassell hikes to remote locations in the local mountains and paints from sketches he makes along the way.
"My sketches are line drawings," he said. "The sketch is basically focused on what's on the horizon. That is what I am trying to capture. Sometimes I do five drawings for one painting. What I am hiking for is to find the background. I tend to transplant foregrounds from other areas along the trail because you find hundreds of good foregrounds along the trail.
"I painted Hines Peak maybe 20 times, and it never worked for me. I discovered if I do it portrait style, it works. When you do a portrait, you can zero in and ignore the other (peaks) around it."
The thrill of hiking comes from seeing wildlife, Wassell said. He estimates he has run into at least 50 bears while hiking and just recently came around a corner on a trail and encountered from a few feet away the biggest black bear he had ever seen.
"He went up on his hind legs," he said. "You want to make yourself look as big as you can. I started yelling and waving my arms. He started getting closer to me, and then he slowly lumbered away. He knew he was top dog and wasn't going to move quickly for anyone."
"The Pristine Ventura Wilderness," consisting of works he painted in the past year,Replacement landscape oil paintings and bulbs for Canada and Worldwide. is his exhibit running through Nov.which applies to the first offshore merchant account only, 14 at the Harbor Village Gallery, 1591 Spinnaker Drive in Ventura.
"Everything is Ventura or Santa Barbara counties,Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems," Wassell said,ceramic magic cube for the medical, walking among the oil paintings on exhibit. "I haven't painted outside this area since I moved here in 1985.
"I think we have the equivalent of a Yosemite in our backyard here, and we don't have the crowds. It takes a little work because they are not alongside the roads," he added.
At patrons' suggestions, he started naming the paintings for the trails — Tar Creek, Sespe, Little Mutau, Inspiration Point, Cathedral Peak and the Punch Bowl — so they could find the spot.
He calls his style "Wassellian expressionism."
"It's not impressionism," he said. "I don't try to get those atmospheric effects."
He is most influenced by Van Gogh and Gauguin, the artist said.
"When I discovered Van Gogh my senior year in high school, it was almost an epiphany," he said. "That was exactly what I wanted to be painting. I hadn't seen anything even close to that before."
Wassell grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania. When he was about 12, his parents gave him a choice of taking music or art lessons.
"I chose art lessons and immediately fell in love with it," he said.
Despite his teachers' encouragement and his parents' support, Wassell was his own worst critic, and nine years passed before he did a painting he thought was good. He took private lessons for six years with watercolorist Alice Welsh Jenkins, then majored in art at Wilkes College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. He transferred to Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore after two years and got a bachelor of fine arts degree in 1975.He started painting landscapes at the institute.
"I painted independently and would take my work into class, and I was on the dean's list for that," Wassell said.
After college, he joined the Navy and painted wherever he was stationed: France, Spain and Italy. After he left the service, he needed nine months to find a job, so he painted full time.
A friend got him a job in quality control at Bechtel Corp.It's hard to beat the versatility of polished tiles on a production line. He kept working in quality control, the last 25 years in aerospace in Southern California.
His parents retired to Southern California, and he started painting here while visiting them.
"I fell in love with the area," he said. "I came out for the Christmas holiday and never left."
Wassell hikes to remote locations in the local mountains and paints from sketches he makes along the way.
"My sketches are line drawings," he said. "The sketch is basically focused on what's on the horizon. That is what I am trying to capture. Sometimes I do five drawings for one painting. What I am hiking for is to find the background. I tend to transplant foregrounds from other areas along the trail because you find hundreds of good foregrounds along the trail.
"I painted Hines Peak maybe 20 times, and it never worked for me. I discovered if I do it portrait style, it works. When you do a portrait, you can zero in and ignore the other (peaks) around it."
The thrill of hiking comes from seeing wildlife, Wassell said. He estimates he has run into at least 50 bears while hiking and just recently came around a corner on a trail and encountered from a few feet away the biggest black bear he had ever seen.
"He went up on his hind legs," he said. "You want to make yourself look as big as you can. I started yelling and waving my arms. He started getting closer to me, and then he slowly lumbered away. He knew he was top dog and wasn't going to move quickly for anyone."
