CA Vistas2

Emmy Lou Packard, Artist, Teacher And Social Activist” – Allan Temko 
 
 
 
Throughout her long career, Ms. Packard upheld the ideal of easily understandable public art. Although she admired some abstract modern art and even bought “elitist” paintings by her friends to adorn the delightful studio homes she created in North Beach, the Mendocino sea-front, and the Mission District, her goal was always to reach out to the people en masse. 
 
Thus, her large murals and, particularly, inexpensive woodblock and linoleum prints — often of multiethnic children and workers — brought her a large following among radicals and conservatives alike. Yet, like her friend and teacher Diego Rivera’s works, her art never succumbed to Stalinist social realism, although she did look to Moscow and later Beijing for many other things. Her hand was too deft, her wit too incisive, for such humorless crudities. 
 
 
Up until the 1990s, when she taught and encouraged young Latino artists to work on a big scale for the common good, she adhered to the goal of a Marxist popular art. Yet she herself occasionally was close to abstract expressionism, as in the tremendous sand-cast concrete mural that serves

Watercolor

San Francisco Waterfrontc. 1940'sWatercolor14" x 19½"

San Francisco Waterfront

Reproduced 1/2 page in color. 
"American Scene Paintings" 
Edited by Ruth Westphal and 
Janet Blake Dominik

San Francisco Bay

Bay Area Landscape,Alcatrazd. 1952Oil on canvas34" x 40"ExhibitedSan Francisco Art AssociationSan Francisco Museum of Art​Additional PaintingsAmache, CO. Relocation CenterCrystal City Family Internment Camp

Alcatraz

Sunset Crater

Joseph Strong - The son of a congregational minister, Joseph Strong, was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1852. When his father became minister of the Fort Street Church in Honolulu, Joseph moved with his family and spent part of his childhood in Hawaii. Perhaps this early brush with the islands had a lasting effect, as he was to become one of Hawaii's most prominent landscape and portrait artists as an adult. 
 
 
 
Strong's family returned to the mainland in 1859, moving to Oakland, California. As a young man, he studied at the California School of Design with Virgil Williams, who was to have a pronounced influence on his pupil, encouraging him to follow the teachings of the Munich rather than the more popular Parisian school of painting. Strong was already such a talent at a young age that a portrait he painted of the mayor of Oakland impressed the citizenry so much that they funded his trip to Munich. From 1875 to 1877, he studied there with Carl Piloty and an artist named Wagner. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, winning two medals, and also at the National Academy of Design. 
 
 
 
Returning to California in 1877, Strong became an established artist in San Francisco, where he o

Camp Crocker G Company
Second Artillery

Bryan (Herbert) Wilson (1927 - 2002) was active/lived in California. Bryan Wilson is known for Wildlife, still life, abstraction. 
The following is from Edward Weisner, Healdsburg, CA: 
 
I went to Jr. High and Sr. High Schools with Bryan - he was known then as 
Herbert Wilson, but his middle name was Bryan so he must have dropped Herbert after graduating from Modesto High School in 1944 (or 45.) He died Aug. 2, 2002 at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital after suffering a stroke. He was 75. His obituary was published in the "San Francisco Chronical" on August 19. I never knew him as an adult, but he was a top student in high school. 
 
Following are excerpts from that obituary by Heather Knight and provided by Edward Weisner: 
 
Bryan Wilson, a widely exhibited California wildlife artist who painted species as varied as pumas, raccoons, and sandhill cranes, was born in the Central Valley of California. He was fascinated with the animals.

Geese #2

The Pink Car

This exhibition celebrates the Bay Area's regional identity through evocative landscapes and urban scenes, reflecting themes of migration, internment, and environmental change in California modernism. From Emiko Nakano's post-internment Alcatraz view to Erle Loran's gouache San Francisco Bay, these works capture the West Coast's natural and built horizons. Bios add depth, like Emmy Lou Packard's activism with Diego Rivera or Joseph Strong's historical Monterey commissions. Perfect for buyers drawn to the luminous watercolors and oils that evoke 1930s–1970s transformations, blending serenity with social commentary.

California Vistas: Landscapes and Scenes