![\"\u201cLife](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/2-Life-Is-Whatever-by-Sarah-Stieberweb.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cI call my painting style \u2018electric realism,\u2019\u201d Stieber said. \u201cI think I invented that term to explain my vibrant use of color and the emotional energy in my paintings. Growing up in Southern California, there\u2019s a lot of vibrant social energy here. There\u2019s a sort of sun-soaked plasticy feel to a lot of social encounters \u2014 it\u2019s so Hollywood. So I really wanted to heighten people\u2019s emotional experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n San Diego has long inspired visual artists. The local vistas and hues, the denizens and topography that define San Diego appear in a vast range of periods\u2019 works, from ancient pictographs to Depression-era sculptures to contemporary plein air paintings<\/a>.<\/p>\n A new exhibit titled \u201cLocal Inspiration\u201d features Stieber and other local artists and is on view at the Ashton Gallery, located at Art on 30th in North Park. The show, which includes paintings, photographs and sculptures that celebrate San Diego, is the brainchild of gallery owner Kate Ashton.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s exciting, what people are inspired by,\u201d Ashton said. \u201cSome are moved by the desert. Many are moved by the ocean \u2014 its gorgeous, rhythmic blues. The buildings in Balboa Park are just iconic \u2014 iconic San Diego, right there. Some artists are painting the sunsets at the cliffs. There\u2019s a rich vibrant orange abstract in the show \u2014 that\u2019s a sunset at Ocean Beach. Some are coming in with paintings of bungalows. It goes across the spectrum, and I wanted it too.\u201d<\/p>\n Ashton\u2019s hope has turned into a visual stroll through the region\u2019s eclectic aesthetic. Coastal abstracts, surreal tree-shaded lanes, cactus and other flora; each artwork reflects a participating artist\u2019s vision of San Diego, of a captured scene, a fleeting moment.<\/p>\n One particular North Park bungalow made its way into a watercolor by Thia Nevius. Titled \u201cCottage,\u201d the lighthearted painting\u2019s subject, with its inviting red-tiled roof and turquoise window frames, might be found in neighborhoods throughout the Uptown and Mid-City areas.<\/p>\n \u201cAll artists are painting biographies of their lives,\u201d Aston said. \u201cThey\u2019re painting how something looks to them, how it feels to them. How they live it.\u201d<\/p>\n Stieber, before pursuing the artist\u2019s life in her hometown, studied at Boston University and in Venice, Italy. But wherever she went, she was pegged to San Diego.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone\u2019s immediate reaction to the work, was \u2018Oh, that\u2019s so Southern California,\u2019\u201d Stieber explained. \u201cIt would almost piss me off, because it was people who didn\u2019t know I was from here, but I guess my upbringing and my aesthetic showed through. My work had traces of Southern California in it, and I couldn\u2019t remove that. I was getting that response so often that, when I graduated, I knew I needed to come back and examine the things that inspired me.\u201d<\/p>\n Stieber has found a home in North Park for her studio, in one of the private artist spaces offered at Art on 30th, and a home for many of her paintings. In addition to private collections, she has pieces in the Marriott\u2019s Downtown and Oceanside hotels. And her work is continuing to evolve in the land of her birth.<\/p>\n And self-expression San Diego style is the foundation of the \u201cLocal Inspiration\u201d exhibit.<\/p>\n \u2014Kit-Bacon Gressitt writes commentary and essays on her blog, \u201cExcuse Me, I\u2019m Writing,\u201d and has been published by <\/em>The Missing Slate, <\/em>Ms. Magazine blog and Trivia: Voice of Feminism, among others. She formerly wrote for the North County Times. She also hosts Fallbrook\u2019s monthly Writers Read authors series and open mic, and can be reached at\u00a0<\/em>kbgressitt@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Por Kit-Bacon Gressitt<\/p>","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":250547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"When San Diego inspires artists","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11547,11551,11550,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-features","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>\u201cI think that growing up in San Diego and living here and painting here now, I feel like there\u2019s been a little bit of a shift in my experience of it. As a teenager, I was responding to high school, and that does sometimes have that artificial feel, and that\u2019s what my art was about. Now that I\u2019m back here, in North Park, my view of San Diego has shifted. I love the community. I live in North Park. I feel very close with the shop owners. It has a very different feel. Now it\u2019s very self-expressive.\u201d<\/p>\n