Mindful
Altitudes
An Exhibition at The Ansel Adams Gallery
New Paintings by James McGrew
Mindful Altitudes
An Exhibition of Paintings by James McGrew Hosted by The Ansel Adams Gallery
September 29th through November 16th, 2024
About the Artist
James McGrew first backpacked in Yosemite at just four months old and subsequent family camping/backpacking trips inspired an early interest in art and nature as he was constantly drawing and painting. He began using pastels at age 8 and his father’s oils at 10. Today he is best known for his oil paintings interpreting western National Parks. A strong background in natural sciences (degrees in biology, chemistry and geology and grad work for M.S. in Environmental Ed) help James understand his natural subjects as well as to carry on the tradition of 19th century artists whose images helped to establish the first national parks. He also lends his art background to his work as a summer seasonal Yosemite ranger/naturalist as he has for the past 21 Summers. His primary objective in painting is to help inspire love and protection of our national parks and environment as a whole.
James prefers to paint direct from life and often works up to about 30x40 en plein air. However, he creates his most refined and largest paintings in the studio from his plein air references. He hikes or backpacks several hundred miles a year, looking for unique perspectives and a deeper connection with nature. He works to create paintings which not only visually portray a scene, but convey the emotions of the actual experience. Although inspired by a combination of Romanticism and Impressionism, McGrew paints with a style that is largely self-taught and uniquely his own.
McGrew’s paintings hang in collections around the world and have shown in
numerous solo shows, national and international exhibitions and plein air invitationals, receiving many awards including best of show at Grand Canyon Celebration of Art, the Zion Foundation Award (top honor and commission for the painting used for all of the following year’s marketing of Zion Plein Air Invitational), and 5 consecutive People’s Choice Awards at Grand Canyon and 3 consecutive years at Zion. He is an artist member of the California Art Club and a signature member of both the American Impressionist Society and the Laguna Plein Air Painters Association. His work has been featured in articles of Fine Art Connoisseur, Plein Air Magazine, Southwest Art, and Western Art Collector. He has presented as a keynote speaker at numerous art and science conferences and presented on stage and as a field painter at Plein Air Convention, 2016, Tucson. When teaching workshops, James interweaves art and science in an entertaining manner easy to understand and he has volunteered countless hours teaching art history in elementary through high schools. He loves backpacking, paining and fly fishing with his family.
Artist Statement
When painting in nature without digital societal distractions, all my senses heighten and I work in a state of mindfulness, fully aware of not just the scene before me, but all my surroundings and everything I see, hear, smell, feel, from the wind or sun on my skin to the emotions created by the experience. I conduct that inspiration into each decisive and interpretive brushstroke.
Painting en plein air also makes me intensely aware of the ephemeral nature of all things, especially the most beautifully compelling scenes I seek for my motifs. Our annual journey around the sun with its 11-year activity cycle now at its maximum, the daily rotation of our planet on a tilted axis, influence the seasonal variations, weather and light. The peak of autumn color, or spring snowmelt flooding waterfalls, thunderstorms and fresh snowfalls, migrations and behavior of animals may only last a handful of days each year. Humans are most drawn to the fleeting beauty of sunrises and sunsets and in the case of Horsetail Fall, we may have a window of just a few minutes every few years where the most dramatic elements fall into perfect alignment. Rare wildlife encounters offer perhaps a few seconds if we are fortunate and attentive. Aurora borealis may appear at middle latitudes for just few hours during the greatest geomagnetic storms in multiples of 11-year periods. The majestic mountains and glaciers which seem permanent actually change over geologic and even human timescales.
Creating many hundreds of plein air paintings over the past decades helped me learn just how special are these opportunities. I feel exceptionally grateful and appreciative whenever I consider that many opportunities no longer exist such
as the meadow and woodland floor of Hetch Hetchy Valley or extinct California Grizzly, each intentionally eliminated in the early 20th century. In just my lifetime and personal documentation of the landscape through my work, I have witnessed change in fire behavior which now threatens even 3,000-year-old sequoias adapted to withstand hundreds of natural fires in their lifetimes but not today’s catastrophic infernos. I’ve watched glaciers vanish through climate change as well as the decline or loss of quiet soundscapes, native plant and animal species and ecosystems. But I have also witnessed the work of historic artists who helped set aside preserves like Yosemite. I’ve marveled at the heroic efforts of natural resources scientists collecting knowledge and helping restore meadow, forest, riparian and aquatic habitats, restoring fire ecology, historic scenic views, and bringing species like the peregrine falcon back from the brink of extinction in the 1970s and now thriving. Nature is fragile yet resilient provided we act in time.
Following personal challenges and losses in recent years, today I paint with a renewed even greater sense of appreciation and gratitude for every one of these moments, however brief, for their inspiration may impact a lifetime. The paintings in this exhibit were almost all created en plein air throughout all the seasons of the past year. Many were painted from popular viewpoints with hundreds of onlookers watching me paint. Most were painted alone with the solitude of nature. The handful of “studio” pieces were also actually painted outdoors this summer by orchestrating plein air studies and memories into larger works. My goal for the entire body of the exhibition is sharing the beauty of events, adventures and mindful experiences.
Mindful Altitudes
Autumn Near Artist’s Point
20x30 Oil on linen on birch ply
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Cathedral Colors
10x16 Oil on linen on board
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Among the Aspens Above Silver Lake
10x16 Oil on linen on board
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Pyweack, Autumn Colors
6x12 Oil on board
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Pohono, Autumn Colors
14x11 Oil on linen on board
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Cho-Looke and Tissiack
36x48 Oil on linen on birch ply
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Soda Springs, Tuolumne Meadows
8x16 Oil on linen on board
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Sentinel Rock, October Colors
7x5 Oil on board
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Peering into the Valley
14x11 Oil on linen on board
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Valley of Ahwahnee’s Winter Magic
30x48 Oil on linen on birch ply
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Cho-Looke, Quiet Morning
20x10 Oil on linen on board
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Snowy Yosemite Morning with Bluebirds
14x11 Oil on linen on board
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Hetch Hetchy Valley
15x30 Oil on linen on birch ply
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Tissiak, Winter Evening
6x8 Oil on board
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Touch of Light on Cho-Looke
12x6 Oil on linen on birch ply
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Morning at Washburn Point
11x14 Oil on linen on birch ply
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Please contact Curator Evan Russel with any questions
evan@anseladams.com
Mindful Altitudes
September 29th - November 16th, 2024
Reception for the Artist October 11th from 1-3pm
About The Ansel Adams Gallery
In the summer of 1902, a landscape painter and political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle by the name of Harry Best took an excursion to Yosemite Valley to camp and paint. Little did he know that this trip would have, indirectly, such an impact on so many, or that we, his descendants, would be telling this story now, over a century later.
That summer he met Anne Rippey, a beautiful young woman working as an assistant in one of the photography studios in the Valley. After a whirlwind courtship, the two married on July 28 at the base of Bridal Veil Fall. After the ceremony, they stopped the incoming stagecoach to have everyone celebrate with them. (Rumor has it that several men were courting Ms. Rippey that summer, and Harry’s success lay in his persistence and having sent back to San Francisco for an engagement ring).
That winter, Harry applied to the U.S. Army, Yosemite administrators at the time, for a permit to operate a studio business. The following summer, in 1902, the Bests opened their studio in a tent in Yosemite Valley. Thereafter, Harry and Anne returned to Yosemite each summer, building the original Studio in the Old Yosemite Village in 1904.
Best’s Studio was a family affair from the earliest. Not only was it a husband and wife team producing and selling paintings, painted photographs, and photo finishing, but the Studio also represented Arthur and Alice Best, Harry’s brother and sister-in-law. Harry was successful both as a businessman and painter: Best’s Studio is the last of several artist’s studios that were established around the
turn of the century, and paintings of his have hung in the White House and San Francisco’ s Bohemian Club for many years. His, and the company’s, success is attributed to a deep commitment to Yosemite National Park and the desire to share and create a positive Park experience for the visitors.
Harry and Anne’ s daughter Virginia was born in 1904, and grew up spending summers in Yosemite until 1926 when the family took up full time residence in the Valley. In those years, and for a long time thereafter, Best’s Studio was the social center of the Valley . It housed the only piano in the Park and the lovely singing voice of Virginia Best.
Ansel Adams first came to Yosemite National Park in 1916 and returned in 1920 as a caretaker for the Sierra Club’ s LeConte Lodge, still planning a career as a concert pianist. This goal brought him in close contact with the Bests, and Ansel soon found himself visiting the Studio as much for the company as to practice the piano. On January 2, 1928, Ansel Adams and Virginia Best were married in the newly constructed Best’s Studio in the “new village” in Yosemite Valley.
The addition of Ansel Adams to the family had a major impact on the business. At the time of the wedding, Ansel’s career as a photographer was just beginning. He had published, with the help of Albert Bender, his first portfolio in 1927, “Parmelian Prints of the High Sierra.” The Studio and Ansel had a symbiotic business relationship: Ansel providing high quality photographic material that appealed to visitors, and the Studio providing an outlet for his work and ongoing financial support to a struggling artist. In this vein, The Ansel Adams
Gallery continues to seek out and represent promising contemporary artists.
Ansel and Virginia had two children, Michael, born in 1933 in Yosemite, and Anne, born in 1935 in San Francisco. The family split its time between San Francisco, where Ansel still maintained the family home, and Yosemite. During the Second World War the family moved to Yosemite year round, and the children grew up in this idyllic spot. Ansel and Virginia published a children’ s story book, Michael and Anne in Yosemite , which still occasionally becomes available on the secondary market.
Harry Best passed away in 1936, and Virginia inherited the business that she had been running for some years. Around this time, Ansel and Virginia conscientiously shifted the focus of the Studio to offer merchandise and services that fit with an ethic to respect the landscape and draw inspiration and creativity from the beauty of the environment. This ethic continues to guide The Ansel Adams Gallery, and, while the standard is high, we think we have been successful in finding and developing artwork and services that fit this ethic. Reading was a life long passion of Virginia’s, and her interest embodied itself in a fine selection of books, and the book selection continues to be outstanding and widely complemented. Ansel and Virginia published a number of books, cards, and other photographic related items.
The Photography Workshop program began in 1940, and was one of the first photographic education programs in the country. The original workshops were one week long with several instructors, and groups of 10 to 12 students worked
with different instructors in field, classroom, and darkroom sessions. Many participants have told us that the workshop program with Ansel and the other professional photographers was a life shaping experience.
Virginia Best Adams operated the Studio until 1971, when she and Ansel turned the company over to Michael and Jeanne Adams, their son and daughter-in-law. During this time, the name of the business was changed to The Ansel Adams Gallery to reflect the primary focus of photography, and the powerful legacy that Ansel had in photography and environmental conservation. Photography and conservation are embodied in the person and work of Ansel Adams, and it is the purpose of the Gallery to encourage the values, efforts, and sense of awe that Ansel held and personified.
