Want to see great art? Spend a day in West Marin
Point Reyes Station has become quite the art destination. Four concurrent exhibits offer an amazing range of style and substance — and all within one block of each other.
Through Feb. 28, Gallery Route One hosts “The Edge of Possible,” an annual juried exhibit featuring more than 50 Northern California artists working in many kinds of media, including modestly scaled assemblage, large-scale sculpture, photography and paintings in a dazzling array of styles. This year’s version of a 40-year tradition is juried by Lori Austin, a Sonoma County gallerist with more than three decades’ experience in the art world.
The exhibit’s installation is a stunning artwork in itself, one of Gallery Route One’s best ever. All the pieces on display are expertly crafted, evocative and emotionally resonant. Many are simply beautiful. Visitors should take their time with each piece and with each section of the gallery, arranged to lead you from one to the next, with strong implications about how each piece relates to those nearby. It’s a brilliant exercise in subliminal association that actually amplifies the impact of each one.
Immediately next door to Gallery Route One is Continuum Fine Art Gallery, a huge space opened last fall by photographer and graphic artist Charles Anselmo. On its west side, Continuum Fine Art Gallery is featuring “Passages” by Helen S. Cohen, with big mixed-media and abstract paintings, some of them sufficiently exuberant to qualify as “action paintings.”
Many art novices — and some veterans — don’t relate well to such works because they don’t depict anything in the external world. In simple terms, abstract expressionism is about form and color and the artist’s state of mind, or in Cohen’s words, such work “explores the intricate dialogue between inner and outer landscapes … the shifting fabric of emotional life, moving between discord and harmony, vulnerability and resolve … rooted in introspection and animated by experimentation, spontaneity and play.”
“Passages” encompasses all that and more. Visitors attuned to nuance will be both pulled into her paintings and expanded by them.
Continuum Fine Art Gallery’s east side is devoted to “Hall of Mirrors,” an exhibit of large-scale limited-edition prints by Charles Anselmo of works by Cuban artist Manuel López Oliva, a fixture in the Latin American and Caribbean art communities. He’s been featured in New York but has had scant exposure on the West Coast until now. Anselmo describes López Oliva’s work as “sensual and intellectual, contemporary and classic, with heroic themes and tropical textures in paintings that represent a series of eclectic, hybrid and often paradoxical ideas.”
Allusions to classical art crop up here and there in the magnificent prints, some with more than a bit of irreverence. Many riff on the culture of magic indigenous to the Caribbean. Anselmo visited López Oliva in Cuba in 2024, where he photographed the artist’s work. He later returned to have them signed, describing them as blending “illusion and hope, and a feeling of longing for an undefined utopia, with unmistakably Caribbean symbols in a visual pantheon of stages, embroidered curtains and costumes, masks and masquerades.”
López Oliva is a consulting professor at the National Art School in Havana, a member of Cuba’s National Union of Writers and Artists and has served as president of the National Committee of International Association of Plastic Artists. “Hall of Mirrors” also runs through March 14.
Enthusiasts can complete their West Marin art trifecta by closing out the tour at Toby’s Art Gallery, diagonally across the street from Gallery Route One. The current exhibit is a group show by 10 artists from Arthaus Atelier in Sebastopol, a collection of modestly scaled but exquisitely rendered landscapes, portraits and still life paintings in a variety of classical realist styles.
Running through March 1, Toby’s exhibit is stunning in its expertise. All the works on display are compelling, and many allude to the European tradition of guilds run by famous artists. Chris Baker and Gary Martin are quite impressive, and so are their colleagues. Visitors less in tune with abstract works are advised to make Toby’s their last stop. Its strong theme of realism may help bring them back to center. An afternoon spent in Point Reyes Station is balm for the soul. If you’re starved for art, it’s a smorgasbord.
If you go
• “The Edge of Possible” runs through Feb. 28 at Gallery Route One at 11101 Highway One in Point Reyes Station. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Mondays. For more information, call 415-663-1347 or go to galleryrouteone.org.
• “Passages” and “Hall of Mirrors” run through March 14 at Continuum Fine Art Gallery at 11101 Highway One, suite 109, in Point Reyes Station. Hours are noon to 5 p.m. Fridays through Sundays. For more information, email Charles Anselmo at continuumfineart@gmail.com.
• “The Art of Arthaus Atelier” runs through March 1 at Toby’s Feed Barn at 11250 Highway 1 in Point Reyes Station. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. For more information, call 415-663-1223 or go to tobysfeedbarn.com/gallery.