One of the major outdoor art shows in the western United Sates is the La Quinta Arts Festival held every March in California's Palm Springs area. I usually write about it, because attending gives me something to do while not driving my wife to and from the Indian Wells tennis tournament that's also held in the area in March.

My interest is paintings, but those comprise a distinct minority of what is on display (and for sale). The rest includes, among other things, photography, jewelery, sculpture and clothing. Some paintings are abstract art, which I generally don't blog about. So I'll mention some artists whose work is at least somewhat representational. I divided the paintings according to whether they dealt with people as subject matter or else were landscapes. There were a few still life artists, but they are ignored here.

Most of the images below are not what I saw at La Quinta. Instead, I grabbed them from here and there on the Internet with the intention of presenting something representing the artists' styles.

Gallery

People

[Image]"Three Ladies" by Tom Barnes
This is little more than a cartoon, but Barnes cranks out a lot of paintings in the same vein, so there must be a market for it.

[Image]"My Life" by Yoram Gal
Gal's works are often cluttered with expressionist takes on people. They don't appeal to me.

[Image]"Studio Gathering" by Ali Golkar
Almost-abstract humans here. Given the colors and composition, I'm guessing that Golkar is a Matisse fan.

[Image]"Hat Club" by Rebecca Molayem
More cartoonishness. It must sell well enough, perhaps because of all those colors.

[Image]"The Mystery of Her Shadow" by Marcio Diaz
I wonder if Diaz was influenced by Chuck Close, in that he builds up images from fairly uniform little shapes. In this case, the shapes are little circles about the size and shape of reinforcement stickers used for punched paper placed in ring binders.

Landscapes

[Image]California landscape by Donny Hahn
The style here is 1920s, where the subjects are partly outlined. Retro, but pleasant.

[Image]"Magenta Hills" by Erin Hanson
Lots of strong color here along with some expressionist brushwork. Restrained, contemporary Fauvism? Whatever it is, something is wrong (I blame all that magenta and red).

[Image]"Spring in the Mountains" by Diane McClary
More overdone reddish tones, but more acceptable than the previous painting. Still, the colors are too fake, and the sun angle implied by the mountain shadows isn't carried over in the foreground.

[Image]Napa valley scene by Beverly Wilson
Wilson also really likes magentas and purples, but she deals with them better than Hanson and McClary.

[Image]"Mangrove Harbor Morning" by Tom Swimm
Yes, it's possible to paint hard-edge landscapes. Swimm's work is little too crisp for me, but he is a competent painter in that style.

[Image]"Serenity" by Teresa Saia
I thought Teresa Saia was the star of last year's show, as I wrote here. And that charming lady does it again in 2014.