Ranchers and Realism

“If I had the ability, I would buy every one of these.”

California Rangeland Trust CEO Michael Delbar had barely arrived at the Faulkner Gallery before the walls of sweeping ranchlands had him smitten. “They have captured so well the open space, the life, the beauty of these amazing landscapes,” he said.

Delbar drove down from Sacramento with Director of Development Shannon Foucault for Abiding Legacy, The Oak Group’s exhibition and benefit sale celebrating California’s working ranchlands.

“A painting can do more than just hang on a wall. It could save the land it depicted.”

That was the belief of legendary painter Ray Strong, recalled by Oak Group Co-founder Arturo Tello. Forty years later, the idea still guides the group, whose artists have raised more than $3 million toward preservation. This exhibition featured 108 paintings inspired by 10 ranches.

“Every direction is open,” said Jon Pedotti of the view from his family’s roughly 2,500-acre Rancho Arbolado on the Gaviota Coast, where the Rangeland Trust is nearing completion of a conservation easement. Statewide, the Trust has partnered with 109 ranching families to permanently protect 434,000 acres, with nearly 100 more families awaiting funding.

“Painting has had a rebirth,” said Santa Barbara Fine Art gallery owner and established landscape painter Richard Schloss, pointing to art’s growing role in protecting open space. “We love this open space. Let’s preserve it.”

Among those gathering with the artists were Winnie, Julie, and Richard Schloss, of Santa Barbara Fine Art Gallery, next to the Arlington Theatre; and the painting family: Whitney, Robert and Tessa, with Duncan and Meredith Brooks Abbott, who all came up from their 1870s ranch in Carp, that has been in their family since 1922. All for a good cause. 

“A painting is not finished until you put a red dot next to it,” Tello reminded the crowd with a laugh. The show will hang in the central library for the month of October.

Here, every red dot helps keep a little more California ranchland open.