News release
The Santa Paula Art Museum is presenting “Greenbelt: Interplay and Imagination on the Edge of Wildness,” a solo exhibition by Ojai artist Christopher Noxon, opening Saturday, May 11, with a premiere party from 4 to 6 p.m.
Admission to the premiere event is $5 for SPAM members and $10 for non-members. “Greenbelt” will be on view from May 11 to Sept. 8.
In this first one-person show of paintings by Noxon, “Greenbelt” showcases the vibrant visions of an artist processing the interplay of wildness, development and agriculture in Ventura County. Inspired by Fauvist landscapes, Huichol yarn paintings, and activists working to protect open space, Noxon creates semi-abstract pictures of familiar scenes filtered through a phantasmagorical lens, focusing on the places where mountains and orchards share space with housing and highways.
The exhibit includes 25 works created over the past three years using oil, acrylic, collage, and ink, ranging in size and scope from sketchbook doodles to large canvases described by the LA Weekly as “riotously chromatic and time-and-space bending.”
Noxon paints and writes in Ojai, California. He began painting seriously in midlife, after raising kids and working as a journalist and illustrator in Los Angeles. Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara featured his work in the 2023 exhibit “Betty Lane & Christopher Noxon: From One Generation to the Next.” His work is in the permanent collection of the Ojai Valley Museum and he’s shown at Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, the Santa Paula Art Museum, and the Beatrice Woods Center for the Arts.
The Santa Paula Art Museum is located at 117 N. 10th St. and 123 N. 10th St. in downtown Santa Paula. Regular museum hours are Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Regular admission is $4 for adults, $3 for seniors, and free for kids, students and SPAM members. For more information visit www.santapaulaartmuseum.org.
